Animorphs: Redux
by CeruleanSlane
Summary: After book 54, Rachel and Ax, snatched by the Crayak before death, make a deal with the Drode that sends everything back to book 20 to try again. Many things change from there. AU.
1. Prologue

My name is Rachel. And unless my situation leads to hallucinations, I had just heard my cousin, Jake, order his starship to ram the stronger, more powerful Blade ship, It was suicidal. It was insane. And I loved him, and missed him, and eeryone else so much in that moment that I would have cried. Except I couldn't, because I died three years earlier.

Maybe I should back up. If I didn't lose you at 'starship', I probably did at 'died'. Just relax, sit back, and let me tell you a story.

It began one night six years ago. I was trying, in vain I might add, to get Cassie, my best friend forever and all around clothing nitwit, to understand the difference between Tommy HIlfinger and Osh Kosh. Hell, at that point I probably would have settled for her to get the difference between Tommy and Mrs. Butterworth.

We were just leaving the mall after I had failed, yet again, to convince Cassie to buy real jeans that fit and didn't have animal poop stains. I love her, and the work she does to help her parents, who are both vets is incredible, but the girl needs new clothes. If I had my way she'd have the clothes she wore to work with the animals who poop, pee, spit, and bleed all over them, and an entirely different set of clothes she wore to do everything else. Preferably with some kind of decontamination chamber between them.

When we left, we ran into Jake, Marco, and Tobias. Jake was my cousin, and I guess we were pretty friendly then. Nothing major, just that we were related and tended to be at the same family things. Marco was his best friend, who made it his goal in life to be the most annoying turd in the world, and Tobias was just some shy, cute boy who tended to get called on in class just as he was settling into a good daydream.

That was all of us. Jake, Marco, Tobias, Cassie, and me. We were just walking home from the mall, cutting through the old construction yard to save time, when an alien ship crashed, and we met the andalite Elfangor. He's the one that gave us the greatest gift, and the greatest responsibility, anyone on earth had ever been given. He told us our planet was being invaded by alien creatures with the ability to invade a person's brain and completely control them. And he gave us a weapon, our only weapon, to fight them. He gave us the power to morph. Later we found an andalite trainee, Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill, or Ax, and he fought beside us for much of the war.

The morphing power was incredible. Any animal we touched, we could later turn into. The one rule that we always had to remember was that to stay in the other form for longer than two hours was to stay forever. One of us, Tobias, had made that mistake, though he later regained his ability to morph. Hawk would always be his 'normal' form however, if he wanted to stay in the fight. And he did.

The yeerks, the aliens who had invaded our world could be anywhere, anyone. But now, so could we. So, over the next three years, we fought them. We won some battles, lost others, and were a general pain in the ass to the entire Yeerk Empire, especially the leader of the yeerk invasion of earth. Visser Three, who was eventually promoted to Visser One, was the only Andalite-Controller in the galaxy. There were many human-controllers, taxon-controllers, hork-bajir controllers, and even gedd-controllers, but only one andalite-controller. He was what the andalites called the abomination, and he was evil in every sense of the word.

We fought, and bled, making allies and enemies, and did everything we could to slow the Yeerk invasion so the andalites could show up and save us. We followed through on our end. We managed to keep the yeerks back long enough for the andalites to show up. Sure we had been exposed as what the yeerks spent three years thinking of as 'andalite bandits' and were helping the vastly outmatched earth military forces fight a losing war, but we were still standing. The andalites just had to lend a hand. Only they didn't exactly come with saving us in mind. They came with a sort of 'final solution', to destroy the earth so the yeerks couldn't harvest all of us for hosts. Obviously, we weren't exactly giddy about this plan.

The others dealt with most of that though. My mission in that final battle was different. And I knew going in that my odds of coming out of it alive were about as close to nonexistant as you could get. I had to stop Tom, Jake's infested older brother, from getting away with the Blade Ship with his band of followers. Tom and his allies were also morph-capable, after getting their hands on the morph-endowing blue box that had originally given us our powers.

So while the others had their own battles, I was left to invade the Blade ship and kill Tom, to stop his plan to take over the Yeerk emire for himself.It had nearly killed him to make that decision, and it had killed me to accept it. I did my part. I was Rachel the fearless. I was Xena. I fought, and killed, and died. I had stopped Tom's yeerk, but I paid my price for it. My story was over.

Except it wasn't. I was still here. Even three years later, not that I could really keep track of time well in the strange sort of nothingness I inhabited while the Ellimist, a sort of all powerful good guy who can't directly interfere in our battles because of his opposite, the profoundly evil Crayak, showed me everything my friends would become in that time. Every moment I expected him to send me... onward, to whatever comes after. But he never did. He never spoke, but I knew he was there. He wanted me to see something, to see it all. From Cassie becoming some important political figure to Jake teaching special forces from every country how to combat terrorism using morphs to Tobias giving up and leaving everyone behind, to Marco being the rich superstar playboy he'd always wanted to be, I saw it all. And I saw Jake, Tobias, and Marco decide to leave it all behind for one last desperate mission, to take a starship and save Ax.

When I heard Jake give the order to ram the blade ship, the ship that contained a strange creature called The One that seemed to be able to assimilate any other creature into itself. It had done that to Ax, and even though they didn't know anything about it, they did know that this thing couldn't be left alive. It was too dangerous. So, with their ship out gunned and out matched, Jake ordered their ship, which he had embarrassingly named after me, to ram it head on. The andalite ship fired its engines almost immediately, and darted forward through the darkness of space. The yeerk ship tried to turn aside, but it was going to be too late. Both ships would collide, and explode, and it would be over. It would be done.

(Enough!) I cried out finally in what I assume was close enough to thought-speak to be interchangeable. (Why are you showing me this? Let me go, Ellimist! I don't want to see this!)

"I swear, every time we stow someone away for a few years it's 'Ellimist this!' and 'Ellimist that!' Honey, you're not a vip around here, sit down."

That... wasn't the Ellimist. Suddenly I went from being nothing, in great void of the same, to myself. My own body, sitting in a chair in some approximation of a classroom. It was empty, except for one other being at the front of the room who was decidedly not a teacher. "Drode!" I spit the word with contempt while trying to lunge to my feet. But I didn't move. I stayed where I was. Whatever was happening, I was not in control.

The Drode, a servant of Crayak, smiled. He was hard to describe, a sort of evil purple dinosaur-like creature with a human face. He was his master's messenger, and just as evil. He was also powerful enough to have done what I assumed in all this time had been the Ellimist's doing. He had been the one keeping me from passing. My teeth gritted and I glared with what I already knew was impotent anger. "Drode, what the hell are you doing? I didn't know you cared enough to keep me around." I tried to sound brave, like I didn't care why I was here or that if I wasn't I would be dead. I don't think he bought it, but the attempt made me feel better, more like myself.

With a snort of laughter, the Drode plucked a piece of chalk up and drew a single line from the bottom of the board to about one third of the way up. "Time for a quick lesson, Ms. Rachel. The Crayak has you. The Ellimist lost his grip on you and we snatched you up before you could move... wherever. You belong to Crayak."

My heart sank, and I tried again to jerk my way out of the chair, but my body would not obey. It had been told by Drode to sit, and he had more control over this facsimile of myself than I did. I felt my anger growing, making it harder to think clearly. "So if you're just gonna gloat for awhile, I'll take a nap." My words, ineffectual as they were, made me feel marginally less useless.

"Oh don't do that." The Drode's almost sing-song voice teased. "Cuz then you'll miss the best part. See we have you, but Crayak... he doesn't _really _want you. He wants you about this much." He indicated the line on the board. "On the other hand... there's someone else he wants... this much." A line appeared on the board without the Drode twitching the chalk towards it. It extended up off the board and through the ceiling. "He wants--"

"Jake." I interrupted flatly. "Crayak wants Jake. So do whatever you want, gloat for years, but he's not getting him. You're stuck with the girl."

"Oh we'd do more than gloat." Drode hissed a little in what I guessed was a dangerous laugh. "Much, much more." I felt a chill, and the urge to scoot away. The profoundly evil creature seemed to stop himself. "Oh but what am I thinking. We haven't even introduced your classmate. There was a pop sound, and then to my left a very familiar creature, who looked something like a deer with a human torso and head with two main eyes and two additional swiveling stalk eyes, but no mouth, along with a scorpion tail and fine blue and tan fur, appeared.

"Ax!" The words left me with a sudden gasp of surprise. I hadn't ever expected to see any of my friends in person again. Then again, I hadn't ever expected to have fingers again.

If I was surprised, poor Ax nearly had a heart attack. Or hearts attack. I think they have more than one. He skitter stepped to the side and raised his tail-blade like he was going to slash me, and then his eyes widened in what I knew was utter and complete shock. (Rachel!) Ax's surprised thought-speak voice came to me. (You are... we believed you were--)

"Dead." I sighed and rolled my eyes toward the front. "Welcome to the club."

In his shock, all four of Ax's eyes had been focused on me. Now he swiveled first one stalk eye, then both to the front, and quickly took a half lunge in that direction, swinging his tail blindingly fast even as he spat the name with even more contemt than I had mustered. (Drode!)

At least I think he lunged and swung. The next thing I knew Ax was standing beside me once more, and nothing seemed to have changed. I couldn't remember his actual swing, just that he had tried. The Drode clapped his hands and laughed. "Good! Good, the fighters, the warriors. Rachel the psychopath and Ax the desperate cadet."

(I am an aristh no longer, Drode.) Ax's voice was dangerous, and I almost wanted to compliment him for not letting what I knew had to be frantic confusion mixed with blind terror show. (I am--)

"You are an insect." Drode replied with a contemptious snicker. "And Crayak wants you even less than he wants her."

"He wants Jake." I spoke to Ax while keeping my gaze level on Drode. If Ax could show no fear, then so could fearless Xena. "Crayak wants Jake."

Before Ax could respond to that, Drode interrupted. "Correction, Crayak is getting Jake." He gave us both a look and then went on. "See, Jake's on that ship there, about to be killed along with Marco, precious Tobias, and everyone else. They are all dead. But in this split second, Crayak himself is offering Cousin Jake a choice. He trades his life, which he's about to lose anyway, to let Crayak have him, and you and Ax go free, back to live your lives. Something tells me he's gonna take the deal."

"Jake, no..." I whispered half under my breath, but from the Drode's broad smile I knew he heard. I glared. "So why are you telling us this?"

"Just gathering the class until it's time to go home." Drode waved a hand dismissively. "Poor little Jake's all done being the good leader. He's gotten too many people, too many friends killed, and now he's ready to make that sacrifice. It's over for him, but just the beginning for you. Think of all the sales you can get to now!"

HIs mocking finally got to me, and I snapped. "Shut up!" I screamed at him, impotently and frantically struggling to remove myself from the chair so I could claw his eyes out, morph to Grizzly and knock his smug head off. "Shut up! You filthy disgusting evil son of a--"

"Language!" The drode made my mouth shut, and I scowled in impotent fury. "Now, as I was saying, just gathering the class, unless the class wants... let's say... extra credit." I struggled to control my breathing, to listen to the evil creature, but it was hard. I knew my anger was my weakness, but that didn't make it any easier to avoid. The drode went on. "Yes, or even better, a make-up exam. I know, let's just throw out the book and retake the course."

Ax, whose hooves seemed as glued to the floor as my butt did to the chair, glowered along with me. (What are you saying, Drode-scum?) His tail twitched, and I knew he wanted nothing more than to cut a few chunks out of our host.

For his part, Drode either didn't notice our obvious anger, or more likely, ignored it. "What I'm saying, children, is that we're giving you a choice. See, as much as Crayak wants Jake, there are certain other things he wants more."

I didn't get it, but Ax did. His eyes darkened and his tail twitched. (No there isn't. The Crayak wants Pr-Jake. But he wants him on his terms. He wants to beat him. This isn't winning. Pri--Jake is killing himself. Crayak wants to beat him, to humiliate him and win himself. He wants Jake to grovel in defeat.)

"Never let it be said that Andalites can't be taught. They're smelly and obstinate and rather stupid, but they _can _be taught." Drode mocked Ax while moving to the right. "Yes, Crayak wants a chance to beat precious Jake at his own game. And he's willing to ignore Jake's deal if you agree to this one. You will all be sent back. The..." He spat the word. "Ellimist has agreed in exchange for something else in one of his precious pet projects. Time will go back to long before any of this occurred, and you will do it again. You won't remember this, or anything else past that point, and it wouldn't matter anyway because time has a funny way of changing the second... time around."

"Wait, let me get this straight." My fingers twitched. "We go back in time, things change, and Crayak has another chance to beat Jake?"

"That's the size of it, sweet cheeks." Drode smirked, and moved forward, down the aisle. "You go back and forget everything that happened, how you 'won' the war, how you both died, and get a chance to win it without the dying part this time. Maybe vaunted Prince Jake can do it without sacrificing over a dozen crippled children this time, hmmm? Either way, you get your shot, we get ours. Tick tock, if Jake says yes first, the deal is over."

I looked to Ax, and he bowed his head in respect to my decision. Jake was my cousin. I had died. I paid the price, and now I was being asked to do it all over again on the off chance that things went better this time. I looked deep within everything I knew of myself, everything I thought, and everything I believed in. Then I thought of Jake, and Cassie, and Marco... and... Tobias. My hands moved under my own power, and I stood up, the chair scraping behind me. I opened my mouth, and the words came.

"Let's do it."

NEXT IN ANIMORPHS REDUX: Rachel and Ax made a deal with the Crayak to go back in time, to forget everything they knew, and go through the war again. We begin in book 20. The David trilogy. We all know how it went, but this time it's different. This time it's far more personal. This time it isn't David.


	2. The Discovery Chapter One

My name is Marco. I'd tell you my last name, but I'm far too attached to living. See, if I told you my last name, it would make it easier for them to find us, and that's something we definitely don't want. By we I mean us _and _you, because you're in this too, buddy.

If you don't know why we're fighting, or why we can't give you our last names, or even swear that these are our first names, I'll give you the quick version. You'll have to look at an earlier book if you're still confused. Earth is being invaded by mind controlling slugs from outer space, and its only defense is me, three other human kids, a bird that used to be a boy, and an alien military cadet.

Wait, before you go running for the guys with the rubber room, at least let me tell you the part where we can change into any animal we touch. It was a gift, from the Andalite prince who told us about the invasion. The Andalites are the good guys, the Earth's only hope. So we fight to delay the Yeerk invasion long enough for the Andalite fleet to arrive. We are my best bud Jake, his cousin Rachel the warrior princess, her friend Cassie the animal lover and earth hugger, Tobias, our first casualty, who became stuck in morph after staying longer than two hours and is now more bird than human, Ax the stranded Andalite cadet, and myself. Marco, the cutest boy in any given school at any given time.

Sometimes being incredibly cute has its disadvantages. Like, hypothetically, when said adorable boy happens to make a perfectly innocent remark to one Jennifer Belle, about the lovely state of her hair in relation to the autumn leaves, and one Jennifer Belle's rather large boyfriend happens to hear said innocent remark. Then, in such hypothetical situations, one might end up in an awkward location such as... oh... a locker.

God it was cramped in there. I'm a tad on the short side. It's barely noticiable, but I blame the hole in the ozone layer. So I fit, barely, in the confined space. I wasn't going to be throwing any dance parties in there, but I fit.

There are times when being an animorph, that's animal morpher for the uninitiated, come in handy in ways that don't involve aliens or screaming at all. This was one of them. My cheek was already pressed fairly tightly against the vent in the locker, so all I had to do was twist my head slightly to look around. The hall seemed empty, so I closed my eyes and focused.

It was a morph that all of us truly hated doing, but somehow it always ended up being necessary. I could feel the changes start almost immediately, and for once I was glad to be in a nearly pitch black tiny space. First my back hardened and seperated into two dark wings that weren't really for flying. Then I felt the odd somewhat falling sensation of drastic shrinking, and the rest of my skin hardened. Then came the part I really wasn't ready for. Extra legs splooched out of my chest, one after another, while my vision inside the cramped compartment got even worse as it became compounded into hundreds of tiny television set images.

I was nearly finished shrinking into full cockroach, only a half foot tall, when vibrations moved down the antennae that had just sprouted from my head. Someone was coming! They were rattling the lock on the outside, twisting it around. I had to hurry. I focused and prayed to get small enough to be unnoticable. The lock rattled and tumblers clicked and I morphed as fast as possible.

Then bright light hit me as the door was yanked open, and the roach mind screamed in terror. RUN! It cried. RUN RUN RUN RUN!! The animal mind and me were in utter agreement about the running part, but we stalled on where to. The roach wanted to get to the far left corner of the locker, where it was still dark and some moldy cheese from a sandwich was sitting, but I wanted to go out into the light of the hall where I could find a safe place to demorph. The roach mind wasn't having any of it, but luckily I had more control than it did, so we motored out of there, with the bug brain screaming the entire way. If you've ever been strapped to the bottom of a race car while it does laps around the track, that's what it's like to be a running roach. It may be small, but for its size that thing rockets.

Thankfully whoever was at that locker hadn't seen me. Now I could find a quiet spot and--Then a voice stopped me. I knew that voice. It was assistant principal Chapman. He was a known yeerk, a high level controller. That's what we call people who have yeerks in their brains, controllers. I froze at the sound of one of our most dangerous enemies literally inches away, then quickly shot past the giant brown shoe that had landed just in front of me and hid out under the base of the lockers on the other side of the hall.

Carefully, I motored down the hall toward what I thought was a supply closet. While I moved, I could hear Chapman talking. His voice boomed over me. He had to be talking to a new student, because he said. "I'm sure you'll do fine here, David. Your father spoke very highly of you when he came in yesterday. I trust that you'll be as hard working and honest a student as you were at your last school."

The boy mumbled something that I didn't quite catch, and Chapman laughed before moving off. His long legs carried him past where I was huddled just at the crack that led into the closet, and I let out a sigh of relief. At least I think I did, but I'm not sure roach lungs work. Anyway, he was gone and I scooted under the door and into the dark confines to become my adorable self again.

Minutes later, I carefully opened the door of the closet and stepped out. There were some students in the halls, but no one gave me much of a second glance. I gave a look up and down the hall before starting off for my next class. There were a couple girls ahead, talking to a kid I didn't recognize. I figured he was David, mostly through the deductive reasoning of one of the girl's calling him that. He was holding something in his right hand that I couldn't quite see, and obviously flirting.

There were two girls, and only one of him, so it was only fair that I step up to fill in the obvious gap. I mean, that's what guys do, right? Right. Besides, one of the girl's, Danielle, was in my first period class, so I had dibs. Of a sort. But someone hadn't told David that part, because the look he sent me when I sidled up beside him and said hey to Danielle, could have come from Visser 3 himself. So the new kid wasn't exactly friendly, but I could deal with that. I turned to smile and give him a great welcoming speech that would make him feel right at home, and that coincidentally the girls would love me for when I finally saw what he had in his hand. At that moment, every single thought I had in my head vanished. The only thing in my mind from the moment my eyes took in that sight was 'Duuuuuuurrrr'. It was like I was suddenly some big guy who went around stuffing smaller, smarter, cuter boys into lockers for no good reason. There literaly was no intelligent thought in my brain for about three seconds.

He had the box! The blue box, the device that Elfangor had used to give the rest of us our morphing powers. The one we thought was destroyed all this time. This kid had it. I realized I was staring finally, and dumbly raised my hand to point. "A... box." Yeah, not my most elequent moment, but it was all I could think of to say.

David looked at the box in his hand and shrugged. "Yeah, it's cool. It shines and stuff. I'm not sure what it's for though." His anger at my interrupting seemed to have been abated when he saw how hard it was for me to throw a complete sentence together. Maybe he thought he looked better by comparison. Jerk.

"Where.. did you find it?" I had to stop myself from reaching out to snatch the box from his hand. It was equally hard to avoid looking up and down the hall to see just who was paying attention to this. Desperately I wished for Cassie to show up. She'd know what to say. Or even Rachel. The kid would probably end up in the same locker I'd just vacated, but we'd have the box at least.

Then David shook his head. He raised his hand with the box in it, and my eyes followed the cube. "Me? Nah. I didn't find it, I just thought I could figure out what it was. It's hers." He passed the box to the other girl, the one next to Danielle that I hadn't paid much attention to. The girl took it and stuffed it back into her pack, and after watching the blue box disappear from sight, I finally looked up, and had my second heart attack of the last two minutes.

The girl who had the blue box, the key to the Andalite morphing technology, was the assistant principal's daughter. Melissa Chapman had the Andalite cube.

We were so screwed.


	3. The Discovery Chapter Two

Take it from someone who knows, when you're busy losing your mind because the daughter of one of the most evil creatures to walk the planet, an assistant principal, who happens to be infested by one of the most evil creatures from another planet, is holding the key to the one advantage you have over the alien armada in her backpack, it's hard to focus on a pop quiz. And speaking of evil creatures, add math teachers to the list.

I wouldn't even have been in class, but the teacher had grabbed me before I could get past her door. Now I sat three chairs behind Jake, drumming my pencil against the desk nervously. The last ten minutes had convinced me that thought speak while in human form really was completely impossible. I'd been sending messages to the back of Jake's big head the entire time, to no effect.

If Melissa had the blue box, we had to get it back from her. It was just that simple. But worse than that, we had to get it back from her before the yeerk in Mr. Chapman's head got a look at it. Which meant we had to move too fast to actually have a plan, which inevitably was going to end with all of us screaming and blubbering for our lives. That's just how it worked.

Before we could get to the screaming and pants peeing though, I had to get Jake's attention. Normally I could just pass a note up there about anything non-animorph related, but we never wrote stuff like this down. On the off chance someone read it, seeing 'Melissa plus blue box' would pretty much kill our security. So I contented myself to flicking little balls of paper up at Jake's neck. After the third one, he turned to glare at me. I gave him my most earnest 'desperate mission' look, and his eyes narrowed. I nodded firmly while meeting his gaze, and he looked pained. Yeah, he knew what I was getting at, and he already didn't like it any more than I did.

Finally, after seven million hours, the bell rang and the class emptied. I shot out of my chair and caught Jake's sleeve, pulling him along down the hall to find a place to talk. Any of you who have been in a public school know how hard this can be. It took dragging Jake into a bathroom and waiting around washing our hands four times for several people to enter and leave before we had the place to ourselves.

Once the last guy left, Jake folded his arms on his chest and sighed. "All right, Marco, what happened?" I couldn't really blame him for his reaction, since I never liked it when he gave me the mission look either.

Normally I would have cracked a joke about how I could never drag my best friend into a bathroom without it being a life and death situation. Now, I just checked each stall one more time before turning back to Jake. "Melissa Chapman has the blue box." There, short and to the point. Like yanking off a band-aid.

Jake gave me an embarrassingly blank look. "Box?" It hadn't occurred to him yet, and I gave him a long look until it hit him. I knew the precise moment it did, because his eyes widened exactly like mine had and he stuttered it out again. "The b-box!?"

He couldn't get the words out, so I did it for him. "The Andalite morphing cube, she has it in her backpack. I saw her this morning, just before class." Before he could ask, I shook my head. "Chapman doesn't know, or she wouldn't still have it. But he's going to find out, any time. We've gotta get it from her before that happens. You know what's going to happen if he sees that thing? Our advantage is gone. We'd have controllers morphing everywhere. We'd never have a second of safety."

Relunctantly, Jake nodded. "Right, get Rachel before the bell rings. They have gym this period. It's soccer today, so have Rachel distract Melissa and you do your osprey and get the box. Take her whole bag if you have to, just get it. I'd love to help, but I've got office aide this period and the last thing we need is Mr. Chapman to wonder where his gofer is."

"Find Rachel, distract Melissa, get the box without being noticed. Check." I rolled my eyes a little. "Would you like chicken or maybe a pizza after that? Or I could stop off and learn to tap dance and give you a quick musical number. Anything else?"

"Yeah." Jake gave me his best stern look. "Don't be seen."

"Don't be seen morphing into a bird to steal a girl's backpack so we avoid being bodysnatched by evil alien slugs. Thanks." I mimed writing that down on my palm. "Don't know what I'd do without you to remind me of the little details."

"Just do it, Marco." Jake gave me a little push to get me moving. "Go, find Rachel." He paused and shook his head a little. I started to the door, then gave him a quick look, and he shrugged and muttered. "Just... deja vu. I swear I've said that before."

"You? Tell someone to find Rachel because only she's insane enough to try something like this in the middle of school? That's not deja vu, Jake. That's perception." He started to retort, but I was already out the door. Find Rachel. This would be much easier to do if there was a clothing store in the school itself. Then again, if there was, Rachel would miss class even more than being an animorph already makes her. Sometimes I'm not sure what that girl likes better, checking out sales or fighting for her life through a whirlwind of claws and violence. If she could figure out how to do both at the same time, I think she'd combust from happiness or something.

Halfway down the hall, I heard the bathroom door clang as Jake left. No doubt off to ferry messages from the office secretaries. How Jake ended up with office aide and I got intro to latin is a mystery for the freaking ages.

Then something happened to make me pause just as I was about to turn the corner toward the gym. The bathroom door clanged again. I turned my head to look back, and David, that new kid from earlier was standing with his hand on the door, staring down the hall toward me with a weird look.

I'd checked that bathroom completely. There was no place out of sight in the main room and I looked under each stall before we started talking. So David hadn't been in there. He was just heading into the bathroom now and giving me a weird look because I stopped in the hall and looked back at him. No one actually stood on top of those toilets, and besides, I would have noticed that. The panic about the box couldn't have made me screw up something like that. No one would have been silent through that entire exchange, much less believe any of it... right?

I kept staring at David, and he stared back. We must have looked at each other for ten whole seconds, and then the bell rang. The halls were suddenly full of rushing students who up to that point had been lounging around waiting for the late bell to tell them to run to class and I lost sight of him. But he'd gone into the bathroom, because that was where he was going. It had to be.

Sometimes my ability to delude myself surprises even me.


	4. The Discovery Chapter Three

Chapter Three

A couple minutes later I reached the back area of the school just behind the kitchen. The soccer field was about thirty yards off around the corner. I couldn't get to Rachel before the bell rang, and no way was I chancing another teacher grabbing me for class, so I decided to improvise.

The worry about what the kid David heard had to take a backseat to this. Hopefully he'd think we were just screwing around. Second best option was he'd think we were crazy. I had to pray he didn't go talking about it, or we were dead. Right now I had to morph, and get to that field. But I didn't want to take yet another chance on being seen, so that meant facing the garbage.

I stood by the dumpster, looking left and right before muttering to myself. "The things I do for this planet." With a grimace, I hauled myself over the side, misjudged the actual top of the thing, and fell inside. I sprawled across old lunches, paper, and other things I wasn't even going to try to identify. Thrashing a bit as my foot got stuck in something, I yanked and groaned. "Oh gross, I think I ate that."

It had sounded like such an easy, if disgusting plan. Wallow in the dumpster for a minute, morph, and fly out. Easy, right? Piece of cake. Hah! You try to morph into a bird while drowning in trash every time your body shifts. I kept sinking and struggling to keep my head up while the changes happened. First there was the feather pattern that etched itself over every bit of skin. It looked very cool, yet also like it should itch. Then my nose hardened and shot out, fusing with my lips to form a beak. Oh good, now I can smell and taste this trash with the same organ. Thankfully I couldn't really smell all that much. Birds don't really do the scent thing.

Of course, that was when the shrinking started. Suddenly it went from being hard to keep myself from sinking through the trash to impossible. My arms were already shriveled up into nothing, and I was getting smaller by the second. The weight of the garbage forced me down, even as I flailed my weak little birdy legs that were already reshaping and hardening. A tossed out plate fell over and smeared tomato sauce over my face, gagging me. I was drowning in left over lasagna. Of all the enemies we'd faced, I was going to be done in by day old faux-Italian. I was so bringing this up at the next PTA meeting on school lunches.

Then, abruptly, the tray was snatched off my head and I could breath again through the last few seconds of the changes. A red tailed hawk perched on the side of the dumpster and glared at me. Not that he was mad, he just always glares. It's a bird of prey thing. (Marco, is there a reason you're dumpster diving when you should be learning Latin, or is this just a better use of your talents?)

(Ha ha.) I muttered at Tobias before testing my wings as I hopped to the edge of the dumpster beside him. They were messy, but still good. Nothing was broken or twisted. (Wait, you know what class I have now?)

(I've got a lot of free time.) If he was a human, or a full human anyway, Tobias would have shrugged. (Besides, I think I did better on that last test than you did. Now what's going on?)

I barely resisted a groan. Bantering with Tobias would have been so much more fun than what I had to tell him. (Melissa Chapman has the blue box. It's in her backpack. We have to get Rachel to distract her and get her away from it, then grab it.) As I explained, I flapped hard once and lunged into the air. It was easy to catch the slight breeze and fly up and away from the trash, but it was a little harder to make myself bank around back towards the field rather than flying off for an afternoon of catching thermals over the mall and watching girls.

To his credit, Tobias didn't ask a lot of unnecessary questions. He just followed me up and around. A gang of kids was around the soccer field. The boys were off on the other field throwing a football around, so there were only girls here on this one. Some were kicking old balls around, while most just stood in small packs and talked while the teacher tried to organize everyone. I started looking, but I shouldn't have bothered. Tobias found her first. (That's Rachel by the left goal post. She's talking to Glasses and Laceless.)

(Laceless and Glasses?) I echoed while turning the laser sharp osprey vision down in that direction. Sure enough, that's where Rachel was. Then I started looking for Melissa.

(She's up near the coach, next to the bags.) Sometimes I hated Tobias's extra practice with bird of prey eyes, but he was right. The small, pale girl with eyes that seemed forever sad was standing behind the gym teacher, too near the pile of backpacks to do chance going for it. Even her blonde hair seemed sad and defeated. (And yeah, I kind of have to make up my own names for people occassionally, since I can't exactly ask them. Let me get Rachel.) Tobias was silent for a moment as we circled the field, praying no one would look up and either pee all over themselves from seeing an osprey and a red-tailed hawk doing rings around the soccer field, or shoot at us with dracon beams.

On our second lap, Tobias spoke again. (She gets it. Give her a second, then we'll go in. I hope you realize how insane this is. It's so insane, I think Rachel's jealous.)

(Now I know this is a bad plan.) I circled the field once more with Tobias while turning my raptor vision on the backpacks. (It's the green one with the mickey mouse patch there on the left side.) Finally I had spotted something before birdboy had. Granted he didn't know what we were looking for exactly, but a win is a win.

While we circled and waited, Rachel moved up to where Melissa was. I could see the two of them talking. Mostly Rachel talking and Melissa nodding or shaking her head. The girl didn't say a lot. I guess that's the way you get when your parents don't seem to love you at all anymore because they're busy working on the enslavement of the human race while trying not to be beheaded or eaten by the most evil person in the universe. Not that Melissa knew all that, but she recognized that her parents were different. I knew how she felt more than she did. I thought for two years that my own mother was dead, only to find out that she was actually the host body for Visser One, who had planned the entire yeerk invasion before faking her death so she could go do more important things. Someday I was going to find Visser One, and personally drag that slug out of my mom's head. Someday.

With what seemed like reluctance, Melissa let herself be pulled away from the sidelines. Rachel guided her toward the goal on the other side, talking loudly to keep her attention. For her part, Melissa seemed content to silently shrug while she was led away.

(That's it, let's go.) Tobias adjusted his flight and dove with smart-missile precision. We flew side by side, wingtips inches apart, straight to the pile of bags. One person cried out as we were spotted. Then a few more people yelled and most of the class had their eyes on us. A couple tried to run at us, but no way they were fast enough. Tobias and I flared our wings to catch ourselves, locked talons around the straps of Melissa's pack. Then WE WERE OUT O-- actually we weren't going anywhere. We both tried to lunge immediately back into flight, but the pack must have weighed a thousand pounds. Instead of soaring up and away with it, we just managed to belly flop straight down into the grass. Let me tell you, belly flopping as bird? Not the least bit fun. I probably broke my beak.

I heard Rachel cry Tobias's name, and had a moment to consider aiming a few bird droppings at her new jeans if we got out of this. Then the girls that had been nearest to the sidelines made it to us. A couple of the girls poked their feet and kicked a little to shoe us away, and the birds in us flared their wings in panic and tried to fly up. This of course scared everyone, because a bird flaring its wings when confronted with wild human girls trying to kick them is so unpredictable. The girls squealed, thinking we were attacking, and the coach yelled. Suddenly the kicking and slapping became real as the girls who moments ago thought we were mostly funny decided they didn't like us after all. and we tried to escape between pairs of legs, but between the flailing hands and wildly kicking feet we were buffeted and battered back to the grass. I saw the tip of a Reebok catch Tobias in the wing and he spun back to the ground to face plant, then a hand slapped me upside the head and I joined him as the earth spun crazily.

(Tobias...) I groaned while struggling to push myself off him weakly as the girls screamed and kicked at the air above us. (You okay, man?)

His response confused me. (Abiego! To send away. Medius, the middle of!)

(Huh?) Pain flared in my left wing as I grunted. (Tobias, what are you...)

(Moeror, it means grief or sorrow... also Moestifer, sorrowful!) I think he was delirious, answering questions from my last latin quiz. The sad thing is I think he really did have a better score than me.

I was two seconds from getting back up and giving the nearest girl a good piece of my mind, involving my bent beak and her earlobes, when I felt hands pick me up. I thrashed and threw my wing out, and Rachel hissed. "Shut it, moron." Then I was pushed into an empty duffel bag. A moment later Tobias joined me, mumbling incoherantly about participial forms.

We were jostled and hoisted up, and I heard Rachel telling the teacher that she'd take us to the office so that they could call animal control. The teacher, faced with a crowd of wild students yelling about crazed birds, just told her to hurry and be careful. I could feel Rachel running toward the school building, asking a moment later if we were all right.

Tobias, who finally seemed to be coming back to himself, groaned. (I think I'm gonna throw up. Hey Marco?)

(What?) I was busy trying not to scream as the bouncing bag jostled my twisted wing.

(When we talk about how we saved the world from the yeerk invasion, let's leave out the part where we get our butts kicked by a group of scared teenage girls.)

(It's a deal, my friend.) I groaned. (It's a deal.)


	5. The Discovery Chapter Four

Chapter Four

We regrouped inside the school after Tobias and I had a chance to morph out of our battered bird bodies. For me this was just demorphing back to my loveable human self. For Tobias it involved morphing to his human body. He'd regained his ability to morph thanks to a seriously powerful and seriously annoying guy called the Ellimist, and even acquired his old body, but he could only stay in it for two hours at a time or he wouldn't be able to morph anymore. That would mean he couldn't fight, and for some reason the nutjob sees that as a bad thing.

The three of us had a quick conference in an empty classroom, and I caught Rachel and Tobias up on the details. Then we had to figure out what to do next. The blue box was still in Melissa's backpack, and by now what had happened would be getting around school. That meant that at any moment a controller could hear about it and wonder why two obvious andalites had been trying so hard to get some human girl's bag.

"I think we need to get Ax. He knows the most about it." Tobias was still glaring at me, even outside of hawk form. He's not too good at facial expressions anymore, after so much time as a bird. "We never should have gone for it ourselves. You and I could have distracted everyone and Rachel could have gotten the box quietly." Okay, so maybe he was glaring for a reason. But still, it wasn't like my plan had been anything like, 'I know, let's go get the stuffing beat out of us by bunch of girls.' Most of my plans that end with my getting beat up by a girl involve me at least saying something first.

"Tobias is right." Rachel said while she looked out the tiny window into the hall nervously. "I can tell Ms. Cherol that the birds got away, but we should've had that box already. Melissa's in danger as long as she has it."

"Oh you're just saying he's right cuz he's your... " I trailed off at the murderous glare Rachel was giving me, stumbling a step back. "Your... yer... errr... Early! Cuz he's early all the time and that means he has great plans. You know, like the early bird gets the worm and all that. Not that Tobias eats... I'm going in the hall to find a visser to kill me now." I gave a decisive nod before stepping around Rachel to exit into the hallway.

Tobias stepped past Rachel as well, putting himself between us before she could take advantage of my closeness to throttle me. "I'm going to find Ax. You guys should... try not to kill each other?" He shrugged and made for the back door before any of our teachers noticed him and wondered why he looked familiar.

As he disappeared, someone cleared their throat behind us. Rachel and I spun on our heels to find Cassie raising her eyebrow at both of us with a hallpass in her hand. She started conversationally. "Okay so first Jake brings me a note that says my dad needs me for a dentist appointment, then when we're in the hall he says Marco found the blue box and it's in Melissa Chapman's backpack." She paused, then went on with a serious look. "Now people are saying a couple eagles dove out of the sky and attacked all the girls. Those two things can't possibly be related, right?"

"That's a pack of lies." I managed with a straight face. "I was an osprey and Tobias is a hawk. Eagles, hmphh. Better not let him hear that rumor. You know how he gets about eagles. You know... unless they're girl eagles." I doubled over a second later with Rachel's elbow in my gut. Someday I have to learn to keep my mouth shut.

"Guys." Cassie looked torn between chastising us or helping us. The urgency of the situation won her priority. "First of all, Rachel's eagle is a boy. Second of all, didn't it occur to you to... ask for the box?"

Both Rachel and I stared blankly at Cassie, and she sighed. "You know, since Melissa just found it? You could have said you lost it and acted really excited that she found the thing. Instead of stealing it from her? Or rather, trying to and failing so the entire school is in an uproar?"

I looked to Rachel, and she looked back at me. "Oops." I said with a grimace. "Well Tobias is getting Ax. We have to get that box back so the Ax-Man can do something useful with it."

Cassie started to say something else, when a scream outside interrupted her. All three of us spun around and ran to the door to see the gym class, which was halfway up the hill to the back gym doors, pointing after someone that was running away. He held Melissa's bag under his arm as he ran, and a black mask obscured his features. But I knew who it was. I recognized his army jacket. "David." I groaned.

"Who?" Rachel was already starting out the door after him as her face bulged. She was going grizzly right in the middle of the school hallway.

Luckly, Cassie caught her arm and dragged her back to the empty classroom. "Not bear, Rachel. Wolves. Everyone use wolves, we can catch him that way and most people will mistake us for dogs. Hurry." She was already matching action to words. "Who's David, Marco?"

I started to morph hurriedly, feeling the shaggy fur sprout up all over my mostly human body almost instantly. "Oh nobody. Just a kid that uhhh.. maybe... might know our secret. He--" My voice was choked off then as my mouth bulged out into the wolf's muzzle. It was just as well, because Rachel cut me off.

"He what?!" If her hands weren't already morphed into wolf paws, forcing her down to the floor, she might have lunged and tried to choke answers from me. "Marco, what are you-gffffmphhhrrrrrr--" Her questions were cut off as her own muzzle grew in, but I knew from the looks they were both giving me that I wasn't nearly off the hook on explaining.

So I explained on the way, as we worked the door open through a quick circus act of lunging and swiping at the knob, then shot out into the hall and out the other door while giving the janitor coming in through it a heart attack. While we ran across the grass and down the street, following David's trail, I told them what I thought. And then Rachel told me what she thought. Well it wasn't very coherant so I'm not sure precisely what she thought, but it involved a lot of cursing.

Here's the thing about wolves. They're faster than you, and they can run a lot longer than you can. David had a head start, but we were hot on his heels faster than you could say 'bloodhound'. All three of us chased after the mixture of cheeto and bad meatloaf smell that led down the street and across an empty parking lot. Already we could see the stumbling figure as David tripped over a curb and nearly fell before catching himself. We were already almost on him a split second later, the four of us having disappeared from the main street into an old lot that used to serve the abandoned apartment complex that stood in front of it.

(This is gonna be easier than I tho--) Of course, because I opened my mouth, metaphorically speaking, things shot straight to hell just then. A sort of sixth sense made me dive low as my ears pricked, and I felt the heat of a dracon beam shoot over my head and demolish a rusted out hulk of a car that had probably sat in that spot for months. I heard another shot and one of the others, I thought it was Cassie, yowled and stumbled with a harsh burn mark across her left flank.

Rachel and I spun on all fours, snarling and growling to find three humans with dracon weapons at the edge of the lot. One of them fired again and we both skitter hopped away before showing our teeth. Cassie was back on her feet by that point, and with three of us against three humans, even armed humans, this would be over quick.

Not quick enough though, as we all heard David scream in surprise. A quick look over our shoulders showed that he had run almost headlong into a massive hork bajir and was now stammering in panic after falling onto his butt with the bag clutched to his chest. Another hork bajir joined the first one, and both bladed monstrosities stood at attention over the prone boy.

Then, he appeared. Stepping forward out of the shadows of the building on strong hooves, what the other andalites called the Abomination. The only yeerk to ever take control of an andalite body. He broadcast his thought-speak for all to hear. (Three of the Andalite bandits and the escafil device in the same moment. It is, as these wretched humans say, my lucky day after all!)

The three of us, all wolves, facing three armed humans, two hork bajir, and Visser Three? That wasn't gonna happen. No way. We were dead. We. Were. Dead.


	6. The Discovery Chapter Five

Chapter Five

While I sat there wishing I had pants to pee in, Rachel, being Rachel and therefore insane, immediately spun on the visser and charged. I hesitated the half second necessary to ponder how monumentally stupid we all were and then joined her. Cassie was right beside me. Rachel yelled, (The Visser's mine!) She lunged straight off the ground at his throat, easily clearing a four foot vertical leap.

(Rachel, no!) Cassie cried even as she took the left side hork bajir down with her teeth clamped around his wrist under the blade, nearly severing his arm in a single bite while the force of her leap knocked the hork bajir over. I tore into the other hork bajir's leg while feeling his wrist blade neatly sever my tail. Behind us, the humans had hesitated, their fear of what would happen if they hit Visser Three overwhelming their need to kill us.

Cassie's warning came too late, and the Visser's tail whipped around and caught Rachel in mid leap. He severed her front left leg completely and cut a deep gouge through her flank, but the force of her lunge carried her into him. She bit down hard on his upper shoulder, aiming for his neck but missing by a few inches. She clung there by her teeth even as the Visser howled in agony and whipped his tail around twice more. Each time, pieces of Rachel fell away as the blade cut into her, but still she hung on even though she had to be in mind breaking pain right then.

I managed to finish ripping through my hork bajir's leg and then lunged off his kneeling body to take the Visser at his left side, but one of his stalk eyes took notice and his tail whipped around again, slapping me out of the air and knocking me sprawling to the ground with a long yowl. Cassie had been distracted as she looked in horror up to where Rachel clung tenaciously and her hork bajir gave her a vicious kick that knocked her side long into me in a jumble of paws and fur.

It took a moment to sort ourselves out and get up again, and Cassie's stomach was dripping from a deep cut that had been gouged through it by the blades on the hork bajir's foot. Cassie let out a keening wail at seeing Rachel, who had finally lost her grip on the Visser's shoulder and was laying almost motionless on the ground. Each of her legs had been severed and there were several chunks missing from her body. She looked like roadkill. Cassie ran to her and dropped down, and I knew she was trying to tell Rachel to morph out, even though it would doom everyone.

The Visser was injured, but would recover, one of his hork bajir was missing most of his arm and the other was missing part of his leg. So in all we'd taken down about half a hork bajir and injured Visser Three. And still standing and able to participate in a fight? Adorable Marco. Actually I would have traded adorable for a machine gun right then.

Ignoring the two injured wolves, Visser Three took a few steps in my direction. (So, one more Andalite Bandit left to fight. What will you do, Andalite? Will you demorph out of that ridiculous form and fight me tail to tail?" The Yeerks think that we're andalites who were stranded here on the planet. It's a thought that we encourage. If they knew the truth, we'd probably last about an hour. So while I couldn't morph out and 'go tail to tail' with him, I couldn't very well tell him that. Besides, we try not to talk to the Visser any more than we absolutely have to, in case he guesses the truth.

Belatedly I noticed that David had grown wise and tried to run for his life. But one of the human-controller's had him by the arm and was holding him while one of the others rooted through Melissa's bag. When he found the box, he held it up high and yelled for his boss's attention. Visser Three turned his attention that way for a brief second, and I went for it. I leapt up the same way Rachel had and in a miracle that probably wasted every last bit of karma I had, managed to bite directly into the same spot in the Visser's injured shoulder.

Visser Three roared in anger and pain, and his front legs buckled. Then I felt a blinding pain literally shoot through me as the sound of the third human-controller's dracon weapon filled the air. The blast knocked me off the Visser and I lay motionless on my side, whimpering in agony with a hole burned neatly through my side. I struggled to rise, but it was useless. My body wouldn't obey.

The Visser immediately raised his tail to bury it into my neck while crowing for them to bring him the box. I lay trapped on my side, the wolf body too injured to do more than whine in agony as the tail began its quick descent. I shut my eyes and prayed for intervention while screaming for help from Cassie.

Help came, but not in the form of Cassie. Instead, the air was filled with a tremendous roar. This was the kind of sound that made prehistoric man weep in fear in their caves and clutch their pathetic sharp sticks. From the side of the lot, Jake appeared in full tiger morph. He took the already injured visser full in the side in a single leap, tearing deep gouges into the andalite flesh with his claws. Visser Three was knocked flailing to the ground with a cry of rage. The hork bajir with only one hand useable took a swife at the tiger, then immediately paid for it as Jake whirled in a flash of orange and black stripes. The hork bajir's other arm fell to the ground even as his snake-like head was snapped around almost completely by a blow from one of Jake's frying pan sized paws.

One of the human -controllers took a shot at Jake, and the dracon beam sizzled across his side as he let loose with another of those incredible roars that man has feared for longer than he has feared any sort of god. The men looked ready to turn tail and run. Two of them hesitated before turning away from the oncoming tiger. Unfortunately for them, they managed to turn directly into the path of resident blue and tan centaur that wasn't infested with a yeerk slug. Ax's tail slapped each of the men upside the head blindingly fast.

The third controller, the one with the box, stumbled backwards. Visser Three staggered to his feet and seemed to realize that he couldn't morph with Jake advancing on him, so he back pedaled while furiously yelling for the man to give him the box.

Ax tried to reach the man before he could move, but the controller threw the box through the air toward his boss. It arced over Jake's head and the visser put his tail out to catch it while laughing. Then a blur shot from the sky. Just as Visser Three's tail caught the cube on the flat blade, Tobias closed his talons around it and kept going. He yelled in exhileration. (WHOOOOOOOOOOOHAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! BIRDBOY CUTS ACROSS THE LANE AND INTERCEPTS THE PASS! DENIIIIIED!)

The Visser screamed in rage and the human-controller that was still standing managed to get a shot that singed Tobias's tail feathers before Ax laid into him. As the man crumpled, Visser Three seemed to realize that he was in trouble. He saw Tobias disappearing with the box over the next roof, and figured there wasn't enough left in the lot to fight over, then bellowed for them to get out of there. The hork bajir, who had partially recovered by this point, quickly grabbed the unconscious humans and retreated with their boss through the next building where we could hear a bug fighter starting up.

Jake gave chase all the way to the door, then came trotting back. (Marco, are you okay?)

While I worked my way to my feet weakly and started to morph out, I saw that David had managed to slip free in the confusion. He was nowhere to be seen. Figured. (I'll live... check.. Rachel... Cassie?)

(She won't morph out...) Cassie's whimpering voice came finally, as Jake padded over there. Ax joined them a moment later and I finished demorphing, feeling exhausted. Morphing too much in a relatively short period is like swimming twenty laps, especially if you mix a battle for your life in there. I also felt ridiculous, standing around in bike shorts and a tight tee shirt, and for the fortieth time that month wished we could morph more clothing.

We crouched by Rachel and Cassie, Jake having demorphed as well. He put his hand on the trembling wolf on top. "Cassie, you need to morph out." Jake spoke gently. "Morph out and coax Rachel out with you."

Tobias looped around and came in, dropping the cube to Ax before landing on the ground next to the wolves. (Oh no... Rachel... Rachel! Morph out!)

Even as he spoke, Cassie was returning to herself under Jake's coaching. She then wrapped her arms around Rachel's still form. "Rachel, morph out! Come on, come on... morph out... the Visser's gone, you're not protecting anyone by staying there. Morph out. Just a bit at a time. Come on, Rach... picture yourself... go to the mall and look in the mirror in the dressing room... look at your jeans... your hair come on..."

There was a twitch from the body on the ground, and then another, and the wolf form gradually, painfully slowly began to become Rachel once more. Thank god injuries were healed by morphing. Under Tobias and Cassie's steady, if fearful coaxing, the nearly dead wolf dissolved and Rachel finally sat up, breathing hard and pale. Cassie threw her arms around her and cried, and Tobias probably would have kissed her if he had lips at the time. We were good. We were safe, now that Rachel had managed to demorph from injuries that by all rights should have killed her.

Then... "Rachel!?" We all spun and looked behind us to where Ax stood. Both of his stalk eyes were fixed at a spot further back. As one, we slowly turned and stared.

Melissa Chapman took a slow step forward, her eyes as wide as saucers. "R-Rachel? It... it is... you... what... what... was... that...? What... are you people?"


	7. The Discovery Chapter Six

Chapter Six

If ever in the history of the planet there has been an instance of five collective, simultaneous strokes, that moment was it. All five of us plus Ax stared at the girl who had just spoken. The four of us with lips were too busy standing with our mouths open to adequately express how incredibly dangerous the idea of Melissa Chapman holding our secret and possibly the very fate of the planet in her hands was. We had no way to express the utter horror of having possibly doomed the earth, not to mention having inadvertently placed this incredible burden on this girl. But Tobias summed it up fairly well with a simple. (Awww, crap.)

Ax spoke mildly. (I believe she has seen Rachel demorph from her injured state. This could be hazardous to our mission.) I wished yet again that I could tell when Ax was trying to be sarcastic.

Rachel stepped forward slowly, I guess because she was the one with the most contact with Melissa. "Hey... Melissa... there's--"

Which, I guess was about the time that Melissa finally noticed the blue centaur-scorpion after having been so fixated on seeing the half dead wolf transform into her friend. Her eyes went even wider, if that was possible, and she screamed, falling over backwards. She scrambled backwards, pointing at Ax. "M-m-monster! What... what is that thing?"

Wincing, Rachel moved quickly to the other girl and knelt to catch her arm. "Melissa, it's okay! I mean... that..." She looked helplessly back toward us, and Ax managed to look only slightly affronted while Cassie knelt on the other side of the girl.

Jake spoke quietly. "Ax, maybe you should morph into human. We're pretty exposed here anyway." He and I moved closer to the girls while Ax did that, and Jake sighed. "Melissa, we... didn't want you to see any of that. It's... too dangerous, for you and for us."

Still sitting on the ground, not taking her eyes off the andalite that was slowly becoming human, Melissa kept pointing. "Wh-what...? What's dangerous? What... is that thing?" She repeated with a trembling voice.

With a quick look to Jake, who gave her a slight nod, Rachel tentatively answered. "Ummm... that... he's not an it, he's an Andalite. A..."

She looked flustered, so I supplied. "An alien. He's an alien." At their looks, I shrugged. "No sense dancing around the issue, is there? She's seen all this, we should explain it to her."

Cassie, who was holding the girl's other hand gently, spoke to her then. "Melissa, we know it's scary, but you have to believe us. You saw him. You saw what he looked like a minute ago. Ax is an alien, but he's not here to hurt you."

"Unless you keep calling him a monster anyway." I offered and the glare that Rachel shot my way convinced me that it was time to stop trying to help before she helped my spleen meet my tonsils, so I stepped back next to Ax to make him stop trying to eat the cigarette butts he had found in the gravel. Ax is a little... weird around food, or anything he can fit in his mouth, since he doesn't have one in his Andalite body. You don't want to be between that boy and a cinnamon bun. We watched, while Ax held the morphing cube in both hands as though he was afraid to let it out of his sight. Frankly, after all we'd been just through, I didn't blame him.

Meanwhile, Cassie, Rachel, and Jake began to explain the Andalites and the Yeerks to Melissa. They told her about the night we walked home from the construction site and met Elfangor. Tobias did most of explaining there. The night had some kind of special significance to him even beyond what it meant to us, which was saying something. When he spoke about the Andalite prince, there was a reverence and an awe in his voice, even now, that did more to convey the feelings of that moment all that time ago than the rest of us ever could.

Finally, Jake spoke firmly. "That's the truth, Melissa. That's the fact of the world. I'm... we're sorry you had to see this, and we wish we were kidding, or lying, but we're not. And... you have to keep it a secret." Cassie gave him a look like he should back down, but he kept his gaze firmly on the other girl. "You have to. If you don't, we're all dead. We are the only chance the earth has, and quite frankly... we have to be able to trust you. You can't tell... anyone. Do you understand?"

This time Cassie tried to speak, but Jake held up his hand to stop her and shook his head. We all watched the girl who could destroy us with a single phone call. Melissa's sad eyes moved over each of us, lingering on the strangely almost beautiful male that Ax had changed into. His human morph was a combination of dna from Rachel, Jake, Cassie, and me, and the effect was a very pretty boy.

After she had stared at Ax for a long moment, Melissa swallowed uneasily and seemed like she was about to say something else, but stopped herself. She stayed like that for several seconds, caught between the dangerous truth she had just learned and the safe ignorance that had been left behind. Finally she answered in a soft voice. "I... won't tell... anyone." She paused before adding. "Who is there to tell?" In those words I had some idea of the incredible loneliness that Rachel had been trying to explain to us when she gave her reasoning for staying behind in the Chapman's house and nearly becoming trapped in cat morph so that Melissa could pet her. She really did feel completely alone in the world.

Jake nodded and then thanked her quietly before gesturing for Cassie to break the rest of the news. Bracing herself, Cassie started to speak. "There's... something else you have to understand. Your--"

Melissa interrupted her then, speaking with utter certainty. "My dad... and my mom. They're... those things. The Yechs, aren't they?" She wasn't looking at Cassie though, but at Rachel, who winced, but nodded.

"They're yeerks." I said with a reflexive quick look around. "And high ranking ones as well. We know that Cha--your dad is one of the ones in charge of the invasion under Visser Three." I paused, then clarified. "The andalite-yeerk that we told you about. the one that... killed Elfangor." I could feel Ax bristle next to me. If he'd had his tail at that moment, it would have been poised to strike. Elfangor was Ax's brother, and he took his oath to kill the beast that had murdered and eaten him seriously.

Looking pained, Rachel nodded. "They are... but Melissa, you have to understand something. Your parents were captured. Your dad... he agreed to go with them. He sacrificed himself so that they would leave you alone. He made a deal... that... he would stop fighting his yeerk if they didn't touch you."

While they spoke, I looked to Jake. "We've got another problem, fearless leader. David. He's out there and now I'm sure he heard what we were saying in the bathroom." I explained quickly and then pointed. "The little worm took off, I figure he went that way, but... he could be anywhere now. If Visser Three gets to him first..." I didn't have to explain any further than that, because he got it.

"Okay." Jake spoke with his leader-tone. "Melissa, I'm sorry but we have to leave you here. You have to keep the secret. You have to. Remember how much depends on it. We've got to track down this David and... talk to him." Something told me in his tone that he just knew it wasn't going to go as relatively well as it had here.

"Puh-puh ruh... rince... rince... prince Jake. Kuh. Kuh. Kay." Ax liked using his human mouth for playing with sounds almost as much as he liked using it to eat with. "I believe that we can find this boy. Booooohhhhweeeee... boooyyy. Buh oy yuh, if we search from the air. Ruh."

Jake nodded. "Right, we'll morph over there behind the building." He started to go that way, and I gave a look back to the girls before following him along with Ax, who was still playing with the ruh sound under his breath, sounding for all the world like he was immitating a dog.

A moment later Cassie joined us with a quiet sigh, like she didn't feel right leaving the girl like that, and Rachel eventually brought up the rear, after promising Melissa that she'd talk to her as soon as she could. Together, we headed for the dark alley where it would be safe to morph and find David.

We were nearly across the lot when we heard Melissa speak again. "Wait." Turning, we saw that she had found her feet and followed us partway. Now she looked indecisive for a moment before biting her lip and nodding to herself. "I want to help."

Jake looked pained. "Melissa, I wish there was a way you could, but..."

Ax interrupted him. "Perhaps there is.. izzzz izzzuh... eeez. Zuh is a very fun sound to pronounce. Though not as fun as chuh. I particularly enjoy the chuh sound in words such as chimney. Neeee, chuh imneeeuhhyy."

I rolled my eyes and muttered, "Yeah, we all like a good chimney." Ax didn't seem to hear me, or he didn't get the sarcasm, because he kept playing with the sounds in the word.

He probably would on like that, but Jake gave him a long suffering look. "Ax, what is it? What do you mean?"

Holding up the cube with one hand, Ax explained. "With the escafil device, it would be possible to give the girl the same powers you possess, that my brother gave you."

We all stared at him, the thought never having occurred to any of us. Finally Cassie spoke. "Ax, are you saying it's possible... to make... more of us? To make more animorphs?" She looked almost awed by the idea of it.

"We could give ourselves reinforcements?" I cut to the chase. "We don't... wouldn't have to be a six person army trying to save the world... we could... make dozens of others. We could have a chance."

"Theoretically... leee... cally... kuh luh eee, yes." Ax nodded. "But I would not reccommend it in most cases. It is only because the girl is already aware of this... war that I even mention the possibility. Teee. Tuh yeeeeey."

Jake looked doubtful for a moment. "I don't know... it's not... something you should just... take on. It's... dangerous. You shouldn't..." He looked like he didn't really know what to say. The possibility obviously intrigued him, like it did all of us. But he didn't want to put that level of responsibility on the girl, didn't want to recruit her into this war.

Melissa looked down at the pavement for a moment before raising her head with a more determined expression, though her voice shook. "You... said... you told me... what my father... what he did... what those things are doing... what could happen to everyone... and what... my dad... is... do you... understand... how that feels?"

Jake and I both nodded at that. "Oh yeah." I said with a sigh. "We definitely understand..." Besides my mother, Jake's brother Tom was also one of the yeerks. We both knew what it was like living with that knowledge.

Hesitating at our reactions, obviously wanting to know exactly what we meant, but letting it go for now, Melissa looked pleadingly to Jake. "Then please... don't tell me I have to sit at home. Don't tell me I have to sit... in that place... with those... things in my parents heads... and that I can't do anything about it. My dad sacrificed himself for me... he's in chains, he's... it's torture, I know it is. Please, please let me help. Give me a chance to do something. Let me fight, for my parents. Please."

Jake was quiet for a minute as he stared back at the girl. I knew what he was thinking. He was weighing the dangers of involving Melissa directly in this battle against the pain of how he'd feel of someone told him about Tom and didn't let him do whatever he could to help him. Finally, he nodded. "Do it, Ax. Give Melissa the morphing power."

Ax looked to Jake to be certain that he was as sure as he could be, and then raised the box to the girl. "Place your hand upon one of the sides of the device." Melissa did so slowly, and in a time that seemed entirely too short for the incredible, momentous event that had just taken place, it was done. She put her hand back down and rubbed it with her other one, as though it still tingled. Her expression seemed to say that she couldn't believe it was that simple.

While Ax lowered the box, Jake, who still looked amazed, seemed to forget what we were doing for a moment. Then he shook his head while barely concealing a broad smile. "Right... Okay, we'll hit the skies. Cassie, you take Melissa and get her something to start out. Get her a bird of some kind... something to fight with... and something small. We'll meet you at the barn after we have a chance to figure out where he is."

Before we could seperate, I decided if everyone else was too amazed to do it, I would. Clearing my throat until Melissa and the others looked to me, I put my hand out to her. "Well then... welcome to the Animorphs... new girl."


	8. The Discovery Chapter Seven

Author note: I just want to thank EVERYONE who has commented so positively on this story. It's you that makes me decide each time to keep writing more for it, and I'm incredibly thankful and glad that you enjoy reading it. So thanks, and I hope you keep liking it.

Chapter Seven

An hour and a half later, we met up at the barn where Cassie's father kept his wildlife rehabilitation clinic. Her mom works at the Gardens as a vet and her dad works with the wild animals that people bring to him, so it's no wonder that she's as attached to animals as she is.

Cassie stopped feeding the caged ferret and turned to us once Ax was demorphed into himself and Tobias had perched in the rafters to keep an eye all around the barn. The look on Jake's face must have told Cassie all she needed to know, because she said. "Couldn't find him, huh?"

"Not a trace." Jake sighed and moved to pick up a shovel, almost angrily starting to work on moving a pile of manure. When Jake's angry and feels useless, he likes to work to feel like he's accomplishing something. I keep telling my dad if we want our house painted or reshingled all we have to do is catch Jake after he fails a pop quiz or something.

Rachel nodded and rolled her eyes with a disheartened sigh. "We looked all over the place, but he's not anywhere on the streets. He's probably at home, or at the mall... which we should have checked."

"Rachel's convinced that David's checking out this sale that she just coincidentally wants to see too." I looked around while going over to crash on one of the hay bales. Melissa was in the corner sitting on an overturned bucket. She was watching Ax with wide eyes, obviously still surprised by his appearance even now. Honestly I couldn't blame the girl for that. He still surprised me sometimes. "So how'd it go on your end?"

Moving over by Melissa to look questioningly at the other girl, Rachel threw a dirt clod at me, which I ducked. "Dork. Just because some of us understand that the Gap isn't that crack you step over on the way into K-Mart. But yeah, how'd it go?" Her question was half directed at Cassie and half at Melissa.

Cassie looked to the quiet girl first, then shrugged. "It went well enough, I guess. We got into the Gardens and got what she needed." Melissa nodded silently and bit her lip, like she was going to say something but thought better of it. I got the feeling she wasn't the type to say much if she didn't have to.

After a moment of obviously considering whether he should question what it was that they had gotten for Melissa, Jake started to ask just that while the rest of us looked to him to voice the question. He was interrupted before he could by a Tobias. (Erek's coming.)

Immediately I shook my head. "Tell him we aren't here. Erek hates us. He only ever shows up to say 'hey kids, wanna go almost die?' Just once, I'd like to run the hologram and pretend to be him while he goes off and ends up blubbering for his mommy."

Melissa stood from the bucket and looked slightly alarmed as her mouth opened while looking at our resident alien. She must have figured we'd panic about how to hide Ax or distract our visitor long enough to get him out of sight. Instead, we just looked to the barn door while Rachel put a hand on her shoulder to tell her it was all right.

Erek King, who appeared to be an ordinary boy our age but was about as far from that as Ax was, stepped into the barn and looked around at us while he spoke. "We have a problem. There's..." He stopped himself as his eyes fell on Melissa, who looked back at him with a confused expression. "Oh hey, Melissa, I didn't know you were here." His gaze flicked to Ax. "And with Aximili I see. Jake?"

Jake, who had come back from shoveling away the manure of his failure, glanced to the new girl. "Melissa, Erek is a highly advanced robot from another planet. They're called the Chee. He uses a hologram." He gestured and Erek complied by shutting off his hologram for a moment so we could see the canine-shaped robot underneath before bringing it back up. At the sight of the mechanical being, Melissa quietly eeped and covered her mouth. Jake sighed then and went on. "We've got our own problems. Melissa found the..."

He looked questioningly to Ax, who supplied. "Escafil Device."

Nodding, Jake continued. "The Escafil device. She found it, but a boy named David took it. He was running around with it. We got it back but Visser Three saw him, and... David heard Marco and I talking about all this. If the Yeerks get ahold of him..."

Wincing, something I still wasn't sure if he did to look more human or if it was a real reaction that carried to his hologram, Erek lifted his hand to stop us for a moment. He seemed to look at nothing in particular, then nodded. "The other Chee are looking. I sent a picture from the boy's file in the school system. Anywhere he is, we'll find him."

Intrigued, I stepped closer. "Hey, while you're in that system anyway..."

Jake shook his head. "Erek isn't fixing your grades, Marco."

I shot him an injured look. "Jake, I'm insulted, horribly insulted, that you would think that I'd cheat like that. The idea that you believe I would have Erek break the law just to give me a better grade hurts me. It really does. Right here." I put my hand on my chest.

He shot me a knowing gaze. "And you weren't going to ask him just that?"

"Well, yes." I responded with a broad grin. "But that's beside the point, isn't it?"

Jake looked torn between laughter and exasperation. "It's the entire po-you know what? Never mind. Erek, what problem did you have when you came in here?"

"Yeah, cuz we really need another one." I supplied with a sigh. "We're collecting problems. One more and we get a free coffee at 7-11."

"Marco?" Jake said conversationally.

I picked at a bit of dirt under my nail, looking from Erek to him. "Yeah?"

"Shut up." Pointedly, Jake turned back to Erek. "What is it?"

Turning away from examining Melissa, Erek looked at Jake. "There's something huge happening. The leaders of the free world, in this case Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and the United States, are coming here. It's a big secret summit meeting where they're supposed to talk about how to solve the middle eastern crisis."

Cassie frowned. "That's what we call a good thing, Erek. What's..." Then she got it. "Wait, are you saying the yeerks would..."

He nodded. "They would take advantage of it, and they are. It's an irresistible target. The leaders of the six most powerful nations in the world all gathered into one place?"

"They replace those guys..." I groaned. "And it's game over. War's over, we lose. They've got control of every major power."

"What if it was the other way around?" It took me a second to realize that it was Melissa who had spoken, looking more at the dirt near Erek's feet than at his face. She slowly looked up at him then and continued hesitantly, like she wasn't sure she should be speaking out. "What if... what if the world leaders were told about what was happening? What if they were... shown...?" She cast a quick glance back at Ax and managed to stop herself from staring too long before biting her lip as she looked to Erek once more, questioningly.

Rachel warmed to the idea quickly. "The yeerks would be totally exposed. They couldn't keep hiding from every government on the planet. They'd have to show themselves. We'd have soldiers on our side, the military."

"It's not that easy." Erek elected to give us more bad news, because he hated when we were optimistic. I knew it had to just irk him, which is why he always kept some in reserve in case he saw us happy. "One of the leaders is already a controller. If you approach the wrong one..." He trailed off as we stared at him.

Jake reached up to grasp a wooden beam running down into one of the stalls. "Let me guess, you don't know which one." At Erek's nod, he groaned. "Great, so one out of five leaders is already one of the yeerks, and the other five are in danger of being taken. Which means we have to stop them, without being killed by either the yeerks or by the regular security forces who are going to be on paranoid shoot on sight alert for this thing. We also have to figure out which one of the leaders is already a yeerk and avoid exposing ourselves to him, while figuring out the yeerk plan and stopping it. Is there anything else?"

"Jake!" I shot at him. "Don't give Erek that kind of ammunition. He'll use it to tell us the earth's being invaded by invisible dragons with atomic breath and we can only stop them by being transported to their homeworld where we have to swim into the gullet of the queen dragon and kill her before being digested."

Rachel gave me a look. "Where do you come up with these things, Marco?"

"I watch a lot of late night tv." I answered with a shrug. "So just say there's nothing else, and go hologram yourself into a big sofa." I waved to Erek with more than a hint of jealousy.

Making his hologram smile, Erek stepped back. "That's all. Oh." He looked at the barn wall and then back to us. "David's been spotted. He's... at the Gardens."

Tobias, who had flown down to sit by the same wooden beam Jake had been holding onto, questioned. (What's he doing there? It's not like he could have gotten the morphing power himself, right Ax?)

Ax was silent. We all turned to him, and Jake raised an eyebrow wearily. "Tobias said, right Ax?"

Lowering his head in a human nod he had picked up from us, Ax hesitantly answered. (I did hear, Prince Jake. But there is a slight possibility that he may not be correct.)

"Stop calling me prince." Jake responded automatically. "And what do you mean, a slight possibility? How could he possibly... are you saying he might actually.." He didn't quite want to say it.

(The Escafil device is programmed with a tutorial, for field use. It is... possible that if he were to have any idea of what it was for, while holding it he might... I stress the term might, have activated this and gained the morphing ability through the computer's instructions. The possibility that he could however is so remote as to be inconsequental. I simply wished to voice the remote chance, as he has gone to a place where many animals are kept..."

"Right." I said with a sigh. "So we can pretty much figure he's gotten the morphing powers and has been bulking up. Cuz you know, our luck being what it is. What now?"

Jake as silent for a long moment, then he spoke. "David has the morphing powers... and our secret... and he's not approaching us to help. We have to find him. Erek, tell the other Chee to keep an eye on him, and approach us when we get there. Guys... birds, let's go. We've got to stop David quick so we can figure out what to do about this world leader thing."

"And at some point." Rachel added. "I have got to study for my english test on friday. If I don't pull a B, mom's yanking the credit card." She sounded like this would be a fate worse than yeerk infestation.

Tobias flew back up to keep watch while we morphed. But none of us did. We all looked to Melissa as we realized that this would be her first time morphing. Somehow Cassie was elected to talk her through it. She moved to the girl and slowly coached her. "Just think about the bird. Trust me, you have the ability. You saw it go into the trance, so it worked. Think about how it flies, how majestic and beautiful it must look... imagine being up there..."

Melissa followed Cassie's instructions, and slowly a feathered outline appeared on her arms. She immediately stopped changing and cried out in surprise, obviously not having expected it to actually work. Cassie put her hand on the girl's shoulder. "It's okay, Melissa. You're morphing, just like any of us. Just keep focusing on the bird so that it continues. Keep going."

After a moment of hesitation, Melissa slowly continued the morph. Blue grey feathers sprang up along her back while she shrank out of her clothes. Belatedly, the rest of us turned around just to be on the safe side while Cassie and Rachel helped extricated Melissa from the clothing as she morphed. When we looked back, we saw a bird with dark back and somewhat orange and white tinted underbelly, and was about the same size as Jake's peregrine falcon.

"A merlin." Cassie supplied. "We had a golden eagle and the merlin. This is what she chose."

(Good choice.) Tobias remarked. He hated the big golden eagles, and he was a little afraid of them. He's gotten a lot more to worry about since he was trapped as a hawk. He had all our fears, plus the predator and prey ones. Sometimes golden eagles attacked smaller birds like him.

Rachel crouched down in front of the bird. "That's awesome, Melissa. You did it. Now just think at whoever you want to talk to."

(Like... this?) Her voice came a moment later, as she lifted her wings out and shuffled around on her small taloned feet. (I did it? I did it. I'm a bird. I've... I've got wings. Wings.) She held them out and up as though to show them to us, still sounding amazed.

Cassie smiled. "Yeah, just like that. Now wait a second and then we'll join you. We'll get you a morphing suit as soon as we can, and show you how to avoid complete embarrassment.

Jake nodded. "Everyone morph then, we'll fly out to the Gardens and stop David from... whatever he's trying to do."

(We can fly? I can... fly?) Melissa sounded like the thought honestly had never occurred to her, despite her astonishment over managing to grow wings.

I smiled, because flying really was one of the very few awesome things about being an animorph. "Yeah, Melissa. We can fly." And a couple minutes later we did just that, rising from the barn on our way to the gardens. One more unsteady than the others, but all of us helping to give her tips and guide her into the air, helping her be more comfortable. We flew. The seven of us.


	9. The Discovery Chapter Eight

Here's the next chapter, with a couple revelations, including one related to the prologue and also Melissa's battle morph.

Chapter Eight

(Oh, god, Rachel... I never... never knew...) Melissa's voice was as filled with wonder and amazement fifteen minutes later as it had been when we first started out. Far from her normal quiet self, every few moments she blurted out a new thing she had seen or realized. Everything surprised the girl, from the way her feathers adjusted to the wind, the way she could recognize people so far below us that to a human they would be indistinct blurs, or even the way her eyes seemed to notice movement of any kind. Her awe filled thought-speak voice continued. (I never knew it was this amazing. You can see... everything. You can go anywhere... I love this. It's incredible.)

It really is, too. You know everything you've thought about how cool it would be to fly? Forget it, because it's so much better than that. It's better than anyone could possibly imagine. Nothing, not skydiving, not hanggliding, not basejumping could ever come close to the feeling of spreading your wings and launching into the air under your own power. It is one of the most incredible, free feelings that anyone could ever feel, and when I'm flying I think the morphing power is worth it.

So I understood exactly what Melissa was feeling as we winged our way toward the Gardens. Once we were sure she had a handle what she was doing, we had all spread out, to the limits of our thought speak range. We didn't want some random bird watcher to alert the media about seeing seven birds of prey flocking together. Only Cassie stayed somewhat nearer to Melissa, flying higher in her osprey morph so she could keep an eye down on our newest member and give her tips. (Let the thermals carry you. Don't worry about controlling every little thing.) She reminded her as we grew closer to our destination. (Just fly and let the bird brain handle most of the details.)

(Bird brain? What does Marco have to do with this?) Rachel shot out quickly, flying off in the distance to my left.

(Oh hah. But hey that was pretty quick. Good job) I had to compliment her as I began to drift lower to get a better look at the Gardens while we moved over it. Below, I could see that the crowd was probably at its highest point of the day. School was out and it wasn't late enough for dinner yet. Which meant we had an entire park of kids about the same height as the one we were looking for. Hopefully we'd be able to find the Chee who were supposed to be watching him.

(Thanks.) Rachel arced around the park on the other side. We spread out so that the park would be easier to search. Erek had promised to get to the Gardens as soon as he could so that he could direct us to his friends. Until he got here, we continued to scan the crowds. It was more difficult for Jake, Ax, and Tobias, since they had never gotten a good look at the guy, so they had to go by our description and keep asking one of us to check someone that could have been him.

It never was though, we searched until we saw Erek arrive at the front gates. Jake muttered, probably more to himself than any of us. (Should've done seagulls.) It was true, the little scavenger birds were everywhere, flocking all around, even landing right next to the people in the park. We never would have been noticed. (Ax, how long have we got?)

(We have been in morph for forty seven of your minutes, Prince Jake.) Ax was in his northern harrier morph, staying higher than the rest of us and more towards the back of the park.

(Dude, they're everyone's minutes.) I told him for what had to be the nine thousandth seven hundredth and twenty third time. (You're here on earth with the rest of us. Trust me, we know what you mean by minutes. We aren't going to suddenly think you mean Ferengi minutes and be completely confused.)

(Do the ferengi have different minutes?) Tobias wondered aloud. (I mean, I'm sure one of their rules of acquisition probably had to do with taking other people's minutes...)

Rachel cut in, sounding annoyed. She wasn't happy that we couldn't figure out where David was yet. (Congratulations, you're both incredible dorks. Mind if we focus on the real aliens now?)

Jake interrupted. (Erek's with the woman eating that giant ice cream cone Ax wanted earlier. I guess she's the chee. They're looking.. where...) His small falcon darted across the sky to see what lay beyond the tall ride that was blocking his view.

Cassie, who was closer to that area, responded while gliding a bit lower. (It's the reptile house. David must be inside.)

(Oh yay.) Rachel's tone grew dark. (Cuz we all know how much I love reptiles.) She paused before adding for Melissa's benefit. (Turns out I'm allergic to crocodile dna, it was all kinds of messed up.)

(Allergic to DNA?) Now Melissa sounded nervous again. I could see her small merlin on the left side of the park as she did a slight climb to see where Rachel was.

Rachel reassured her quickly. (Don't worry, it hasn't happened before or since. It was just a lot of uncontrollable morphing. Now let's go get David.) She started to swoop down toward the reptile house.

(Um. Rachel?) Melissa's asked hesitantly. (Wouldn't... a... bald eagle charging into the reptile house at the zoo be kind of... umm... obvious?) She sounded like she wasn't sure she should be the one to question Rachel's tactics.

(I like her.) I commented easily. (She has sense. Rachel, take notes.)

Rachel started to retort about something else she'd take, but Jake interrupted. (Cassie has an empty exhibit for us. Follow her down, one at a time. Marco first, then Tobias, Ax, Melissa, Rachel. I'll bring up the rear. Erek'll bring us the clothes he came with.)

We found the unused exhibit and a couple minutes later most of us had demorphed, and in Ax's case remorphed, except for Melissa, who didn't have a morphing outfit. She perched on a log that looked like it was for some kind of snake to coil around and watched the rest of us. (So it has to be skintight?)

"Yeah." I said with a forlorn look at the incredibly unstylish outfits most of us wore. "And apparently Rachel's the only one that's allowed to one that looks decent." I tried one more time to press a topic I kept losing every time. "Which brings me back to--"

Rachel interrupted. "No costumes, Marco. We're not the X-Men."

"Well no duh!" I cried while pulling the plain white tee shirt out a bit. "Who would mistake us for them? We don't look like superheroes. We look like refugees from a late night exercise infomercial.)

Jake stepped over to the gate to let Erek in. He commented while taking the bag that the android passed him. "That's because we're not superheroes, Marco." He said this with a sort of tired patience, the same way he always said it.

"We change into animals and fight alien monsters, Jake." I retorted. "What would you call it, exactly?"

"Like you said at the beginning of all this." Jake replied with a grin as he tossed me a pair of jeans. "Idiot teenagers with a death wish."

I groaned and started getting dressed near the front of the cage while the girls changed at the back. We waited in our motley collection of Goodwill clothes for a minute until Melissa finally emerged with the sweats and baseball jersey that Erek had scavenged for her. She blinked at the logo on the front. "I'm not even really into baseball. What's a ummm..." She turned her head a little to read it. "... Oriole anyway?"

Jake and I both looked at each other and shrugged, and Tobias answered. "The bird on the top of the logo. That's an oriole. They're actually pretty cool. I see them sometimes, checking out the feeders ahead of the hummingbirds." He offered helpfully.

"Thanks, Tobias. But if the ornithology lesson is over..." Jake spoke mildly while standing near the gate next to Erek. "We could go... I dunno... stop David?" He waved his hands like it was a crazy suggestion and then started out.

Hesitantly, Melissa tried to keep the peace by offering. "Um. At least we learned something?" She was the third out the gate, after Cassie. Tobias was going to be keeping an eye on the building from above, in case David ditched.

"Yeah, we did." I agreed while following Rachel a second later. "We learned that Jake would rule at scrabble. Ornithology, dude? What happened to 'bird'?"

"You really want the bird?" Jake asked as we approached the reptile house. "Cuz I could give you the bird."

Melissa whispered something to Cassie, and Cassie nodded. "Yep, they really are always like this."

(Be careful, guys.) Tobias cautioned while he flapped hard to get into the air. (If David can morph he could be anything in there. Keep your eyes open.) He disappeared over the roof of the building a second later.

The six of us made it into the building then. Erek waited outside, since his programming forbid him from direct confrontation. Like most reptile houses it was semi-dark in the regular area where the visitors stood so that it was easier to see into the exhibits where the snakes and other reptiles were. The place was quiet. As someone less paranoid might have said, too quiet. There didn't seem to be anyone in here at the moment, which was kind of weird.

"So... where is he?" Rachel asked while she stood near the python cage, half watching the lazy snake inside and half searching the empty room.

"In here... somewhere..." Jake turned in a circle and took in each exhibit slowly. "Something has to be out of place. David!" He tried calling. "Come on, we just want to talk. Let's do this the easy way, just project your thoughts to us so we can talk to you." He turned again, trying to see something, one of the animals that looked out of place against the others.

It happened too suddenly to react to quick enough. Ax was leaning over the railing of one of the snake exhibits while we talked about how to figure out which animal was David. I was mostly around the corner of the small loop at the end of the room, near Melissa who was next to the exit door. From the corner of my eye, I saw something strange. On the top of the glass walled exhibits opposite where Ax was, between them and the ceiling there was a space. Something glittered there and I saw the movement, turning to take it in before yelling. "He's on top of the--" It was too late though, as a lion leapt down from the top of the exhibit, slamming into Ax and knocking him over the railing and into the glass with a sickening crash.

Cassie, who had been next to Ax spun and yelled when she saw what had happend, but the huge cat took a quick swipe and smacked her upside the head, knocking her senseless. The lion roared and a thought-speak voice crowed. "Hah! Two down! You're not turning me into a rat this time."

Jake, who had shouted at Cassie being smacked unconscious and was already halfway to tiger stopped at that, a look of confusion on his face. "Huh?" That bit of hesitation was all David needed, because he was on Jake a second later with another roar. Outside, people were screaming. For a second I wondered if anyone would come in and see all this, then I realized that the odds of any human running toward the sound of the enraged lion were pretty low for now. David quickly took part of Jake's head in his large maw and glared at Rachel, who had made it all the way into Grizzly by this time. (You demorph now, you psycho!) He cried at her with a furious, and possibly terrified tone. (Or Cousin Jake gets to find out what happens when he bites down on someone. You too.) He directed Jake. (Demorph, demorph now!)

Three things struck me then. The first was that David knew more about all this than we thought he did. The second was that he seemed to be at least partly insane, talking about things we couldn't understand. The last thing I noticed was that he hadn't paid the least bit of attention to Melissa or myself. I checked quickly, and yeah, we seemed to both be out of his direct line of sight. Cautiously, I stepped back to where she was huddled near the door.

"Melissa." I whispered quietly. "In a second as soon as they're demorphed, he's going to let Jake's head go. As soon as he does, we've got to jump him. You have a battle morph, right?"

She looked torn, and scared, and I caught her shoulder to make her look at me. "Melissa, please. Focus. We have to help the others, okay? It's going to be all right. We can take him if we work together. Now morph." I suited action to words, and felt the familiar changes as I made the switch to gorilla and felt the massive strength that came with it.

Once I had finished, I checked the scene around the corner. David had Jake and Rachel, both fully human, pulling the unconscious Ax and Cassie into the middle of the hall. He was still ranting about not being trapped on an island, or something. The morphing cube must have done something to his brain, because the guy had completely lost it.

(Ready?) I asked while looking back to check. When I saw what Melissa had morphed, I raised a gorilla eyebrow. (Huh. That definitely gives me an idea...) I tested one of the railings and smiled. (Yep, definitely. Rachel's busy, so I'll say it. Let's do it.)

A moment later, after I had ripped the railing free with a horrible wrenching noise that made David spin around as quick as his four legs would let him, Melissa and I came around the corner. I held the ripped up railing in one hand while sitting on Melissa's back. (So it's not the traditional knight in shining armor and brave steed.) I remarked casually. (It's still awesome.) Then I lowered the metal railing like a lance, and we charged the temporarily stunned lion.

And really, wouldn't you freeze if you saw a gorilla charging at you riding a bull hippopotamus?


	10. The Discovery Chapter Nine

Once again, I'd like to thank everyone for your comments. I really love reading them, and I love writing this story. The animorphs were my favorite series growing up, and I'm glad I can do this little homage to them with my own story. Also, to answer gabrieldarke's question, Rachel and Ax don't remember the previous timeline because that was part of the deal they made with the Drode. David does remember because... well you'll have to read the story to find that out.

Chapter Nine

I saw the lion's eyes go wide as David took a reflexive step back. His thought-speak voice was full of confusion. (Seven? No... no, what happened to--) We reached him then and I swung my makeshift lance with all the strength that my massive gorilla arm could manage. If you've ever seen a gorilla, you know that's a lot of strength. A gorilla could twist a foot thick steel rod in half and play horseshoes with it over the length of a football field. They are pound for pound the best mix of strength and dexterity that can be found in the animal kingdom. Combine that with the force from a charging hippo, which makes a lion seem puny.

So, when the ripped up railing hit David, it snapped in half. The railing simply couldn't take the strain that my strength had forced on it. The blow lifted the lion off its feet and hurled it through the glass of one of the lizard cages where it lay on its side, bloody and unmoving.

I dropped down to the floor and knuckle walked to the edge of the fence, staring at the still lion. (Melissa, check on the others. Jake man, you both okay?) There was no answer for a moment, and I looked back to see Jake and Rachel both taking a couple of cautious steps away from the hippo, which was looking at them like a mother bear might look at a human poking her cub with a stick. (Uhhh... Melissa?)

Tobias's voice came then. I guess he had landed on the roof. (Guys? What's going on in there? I heard a roar. Did we get him?)

(We have a uhh... situation with Melissa.) I responded while taking a step over sideways, nearly putting my foot down on a few lizards that were scattering and running for freedom. (She lost control of the morph.)

(How big of a problem is it?) Tobias asked, sounding like he wished he was in here to help.

(Um.) I looked at the massive and temperamental creature. (Big. Just a minute, we've got to try to talk her down.)

The hippo grunted and made an angry wheezing sound, opening its mouth wide to show all four of its foot long tusk-like teeth. Here's the thing about hippos that I found out later. You may think they're cute, fat, and harmless, but they're not. Some people consider the Hippopotamus to be one of the most dangerous animals in Africa. They get to be around thirteen feet long while standing about five feet tall at the shoulder, and can weigh up to four thousand pounds. They are also one of the most unpredictable and violent animals around. Some predators may attack one of the young, but nothing but a well armed man hunts the adult bull hippo. The only enemies they have besides humans are other bull hippos.

"Melissa..." Rachel was saying while taking another step back. "It's the animal mind taking over. Melissa, it's me, Rachel. You have to take control back. You have to calm down. It's okay. You are human. You are Melissa Chapman. Come on, think about gymnastics. Remember Fluffer McKitty? You love that cat. You're Melissa."

The hippo that was Melissa wasn't buying it, and with its mouth open over three feet wide, began to charge. A full grown hippo can run for a short distance up to thirty miles an hour, easily outstripping the average human. I lunged and wrapped my broad arms around the back of the hippo and hung on for dear life. Now, a gorilla is unbelievably strong. But it isn't strong enough to stop a four thousand pound hippo in a charge. I could however, slow it down. (Guys, get out of the way! I can't hold this thing.)

I was ripped off my feet then, as Rachel and Jake took advantage of the slight delay to throw themselves over the railing into the fake foilage. That puny railing wouldn't stop the hippo any more than it had stopped me from tearing it up, but maybe them being out of sight would calm the thing enough for Melissa to regain control.

Instead, it turned back around after its short charge and tried to bite me in half. I barely managed to hurl myself backwards before the thing would have taken my arm off. (Melissa!) I yelled out in near a panic as the beast tried to run me down this time. (Melissa, stop!)

Just as the hippo had me backed to the edge of one of the cages, it stopped and looked confused for a moment. A confused, somewhat frightened voice asked. (Wh-what? Marco... what did I... what... happened?)

The hippo was already starting to shrink, and I breathed a sigh of relief. (The animal instincts just took over. It happens sometimes if you're not used to it. Rachel, Jake, come on, it's okay.)

They both emerged slowly and Jake slipped under the railing. "Uhhh, Melissa, don't demorph all the way yet." Jake brought a groggy Ax and Cassie around. Meanwhile, Rachel collected Melissa's clothes that she had dropped by the door and helped her dress after demorphing. I took the time to look back to the cage where the lion had been hurled. Sure enough, David had disappeared. He could have morphed any of the little lizards that even now were running off into the zoo.

Once we were sure we weren't going to find any more clue of where he had gone and had picked up what remained of the rest of our clothes, Jake directed us all to leave and get back to the empty exhibit before zoo security managed to show up. While Tobias lamented that he hadn't followed any of the lizards that emerged from the building, Rachel tried to tell him he couldn't possibly have known which one was David.

Melissa sat dejected on the same log she had perched on earlier. "I'm sorry, guys." She pried a piece of bark off the log and started to pick it apart with her fingers. "You had him and... and I couldn't... I didn't even know I was human. I couldn't think. The hippo, it was... so mad... so angry. I just..." She sighed again and said for the fifth time. "I'm sorry..."

"It's okay, Melissa." Cassie tried to make the girl feel better. "Everyone has problems at first. We should've let you morph before and get the hang of the hippo before taking you into something like that. We've all lost control before, even in life and death situations. It happens to everyone sometimes." She put a hand on Melissa's back and scratched her leg.

"Yeah." Rachel was at the edge of the fence, looking torn between being angry about losing David and making her friend feel better. "Besides... he can't hide forever. The Chee'll pick him up somewhere, or Tobias will see him from the air." Tobias had taken off to do a sweep around the alleys and other places near the Gardens where David could demorph, and Erek had agreed to have the rest of the Chee keep an eye out for the guy, including by his house. Somewhere, we'd pick him up.

(As David has acquired the ability to morph, he will be much more difficult to capture.) Ax was in northern harrier morph, since we needed to leave soon and in any case, anyone who happened to walk past might be suspcious of a few kids hanging out in an empty exhibit with a bird, but they would down right freak if they saw an Andalite.

"Too bad we don't have a way to find morphing energy." Jake said thoughtfully while watching the sky for a sign that Tobias was coming back with news. It was a futile hope, and we all knew it, but he kept looking up anyway.

"Yeah..." Rachel turned back to the rest of us with a sigh. "We need a veleek." We stared at her, most of us remembering the collection of tiny alien creatures that had formed into a giant buzzsaw tornado of death and ripped through half the city hunting us awhile back. Blanching at the memory, Rachel shook her head. "Kidding... mostly."

"What was David talking about?" Cassie wondered aloud. We had told her what the boy had said. "A rat trapped on an island?"

Jake looked to Ax. "Could the box have messed with his mind when it connected to him to show him how to use it?"

Sounding doubtful, Ax answered slowly. (It is... possible... that the tutorial of the escafil device might have... imparted strange memories into the mind of the human boy, but that is extremely unlikely, Prince Jake. And the memories you describe do not appear to be andalite memories, which would not make sense.)

"Whatever his problem is," Rachel stepped over to where Melissa was after another glance out to the reptile house where park workers were still trying to figure out what had happened. "he has to be stopped. He could blow everything."

I waved a stick in the air randomly. "If that punk runs to Visser 3, or gets himself seen morphing, we could all be dead in a couple days. We have to find him fast."

"And then what?" Cassie asked softly from where she sat next to Melissa. Her hand idly rubbed at her jeans while she quietly questioned our next actions. "What do we do with David after we find him?" That stopped all of us as she looked at each person. "We obviously can't make him promise not to do anything. He's already violent. And he's probably not going to want to help, not with that reaction. So... what do we do?"

After we were all silent for a minute, considering what none of us actually wanted to consider, Jake cleared his throat. "We'll work through that once we have an idea of where he is. We can't forget about the real mission either. All the world leaders out at the Marriott. We've only got a couple days before the big talks, and the yeerks might strike before that. We need intelligence, because we can't go into this blind."

"David's a threat right now." Rachel argued. She ticked the points off on her fingers. "He can morph. He knows our identities. He can find out where we live. He could lead Visser 3 right to our houses."

"You're right." Jake seemed torn as he gripped one of the bars on the edge of the cage. "We can't ignore either problem. So we're going to have to split up." He sighed slowly. "I know it's late, and I know we're all tired, but we can't stop right now. There's too much at stake."

Sounding apologetic, Cassie shook her head. "I have to get home. In fact I better catch up with my mom before she leaves. We have this big family dinner thing tonight. I'm like... beyond dead if I miss it, and I don't think you want me grounded for the next few days."

Jake nodded after a moment. "All right, Cassie heads home. The rest of us split up. Marco, you and Melissa go with Ax and meet up with Tobias. The four of you get a look at the resort. See what kind of security they've got set up already. Try to find us an access point. Maybe Ax can see if the yeerks have moved anything special in yet. Rachel and I will help the Chee look for David."

"First." I interjected. "We'll stop by the mall and get Melissa a morphing suit. Then we'll go start playing Rainbow Six on the resort."

Jake nodded at that, satisfied, and we all morphed to bird except for Cassie, who collected our abandoned clothes and stuffed them in a zoo visitors bag. A few minutes later the rest of us took off, splitting into two groups and heading in different directions. I saw Cassie heading to her mother's car and she waved.

There were three things that I didn't know as I flew away from the zoo parking lot with Melissa and Ax to find Tobias. First, David hadn't morphed a lizard. Second, Cassie had been scratching at a fly earlier. And finally, what I didn't realize as we left her to climb into her mother's car, was that Cassie as I knew her, I would never see again.


	11. The Discovery Chapter Ten

Thanks guys. Here's the next chapter, and to answer atlastme, yes there will be a real conversation between David and the others about what happened to him before. I won't promise when, but it will happen.

Chapter Ten

The next day, thankfully, was a weekend. It was a tired bunch of kids who dragged themselves into Cassie's barn early in the morning after a restless night of wondering if we were going to be dragged from our beds by armed hork bajir any second. I'm not sure about the others, but I know every single creak and sound had me sitting bolt upright in bed. It was nerve racking and terrifying, worrying about what David was doing out there. Melissa hadn't even arrived yet.

Jake and Rachel hadn't been able to find him, even with the help of the Chee. It was like the guy had simply disappeared. There was no sign of him at all.

While Cassie sat on one of the barrels and ate an orange, with Rachel and Jake leaning tiredly on the wall on either side of her, I explained what we had seen. "Well, the good news is that if we pull this off, we will never have to worry about getting stuck in that Rainbow Six level again, because we'll be infiltration gods."

(What is this rainbow, and why are there six of them?) Ax wondered. (Is this a naturally occurring human phenomenon?) He stood in one of the horse stalls, so that it would be easier to hide if we were interrupted. We were all paranoid this morning.

"It's a game." I explained. "You know, a video game."

(Ah. Yes, I understand now.) Ax's stalk eye swiveled to the ceiling where Tobias perched. (Tobias has explained the concept. It is the large black machine that human children put the shiny metal into and compete to see who may twist the knobs and push the buttons most quickly while shouting words that they are not supposed to say until the adult proprietor tells them to quiet themselves. Then the children laugh, and it is apparent that the one who has attracted the attention has won the game.)

"Yeah, something like that." I said with a shrug, then yawned. "Except most of these games are played at home."

Now Ax looked confused again. (But if there is no adult proprietor, how does a person know if they have won?)

"That's what parents are for." I shrugged again and stepped over to one of the cages where a fox lay on its side, breathing shallowly. "What's up with this guy?"

I looked over my shoulder at Cassie, who winced and pushed a wedge of orange into her mouth, chewing slowly before answering.. "Dad found him by the side of the road. We don't know what's wrong with him yet. He's supposed to check him out today, so we need to hurry and get out of here."

Jake paused in mid yawn and then nodded while pushing off the wall. "All right, so what exactly did you see for security, guys? Wait, first, where's Melissa?" He began to pace while he listened, with an intently thoughtful look.

"She's got a special gymnastics class this morning." Rachel answered with a grim smile. "I'm supposed to be there, but I'm blowing it off. She can't, because it's at the school and her dad's working in his office. He gave her a ride." She shuddered.

Jake looked to the silent Cassie for a moment before asking. "How's she taking it?" Rachel had gone home with Melissa the night before when we met up for a couple minutes.

"Not very well." Rachel answered with a long sigh. "She wanted to know how she was supposed to sleep at home and know those things were in her parents heads. She wanted to know how you stop yourself from trying to rip the slug right out of Tom's head."

Rubbing his hand over his eyes, Jake shook his head. "It's not easy. I just hope she can keep it together." He looked to Cassie, who gave him an encouraging smile, and then he stepped over and picked up the shovel from the day before. While he absently washed the thing with the hose in the corner, Jake asked. "All right, we'll fill her in. What'd you guys find?"

(The better question is what didn't we find.) Tobias responded from his spot in the rafters. (We've got Secret Service, the protection services from every other world leader, the local cops, the national guard, hotel security, and that's just the mundane security measures. We didn't get too close, but Ax says it looks like the yeerks have added bio-filters at each entrance.)

"How can they do that?" Rachel wondered while flinching at the memory of the device that protected the yeerk pool entrances by attacking anything with DNA not programmed into it. "I mean, they could program it for all the resort staff and anything, but if someone new walks in they get disintegrated. How could the Yeerks explain that, or risk it?"

Ax answered her. (It is more likely that the Gleet Bio-Filter is programmed to allow all human dna, but no small animals such as bugs or any of our other infiltration creatures. They are disguised as metal detectors, but we observed a mouse killed while attempting to enter the building through them.)

"You mean Tobias observed." I corrected with a glance upwards. "He was hungry."

(And now I've eaten.) Tobias responded coolly. "Can you guess what comes after eating? You know, while you're standing directly below me? By the way, I think Melissa's on her way. That or there's a really lost merlin searching for work as a farmhand. I don't thinks she's completely sure of which place is Cassie's.) It made sense, the girl had only been here a couple times before this had happened, back when she was a closer friend of Rachel's, and the day before she had understandably been distracted.

"Point taken." I stepped to the side anyway and looked at Jake. "So we can't get in through our normal ways. Even the windows are covered."

Jake nodded and then glanced up. "Go guide Melissa this way." After Tobias had flapped up through the opening in the ceiling, he looked over to Ax while tapping the shovel against the dirt absently. "Do you have any idea of how we can beat the bio-filters and get inside?"

Ax hesitated before answering. (I am not certain, Prince Jake. If we do not morph into a human capable of passing through the machines, I don't believe it would be possible. But we may be able to find an entrance that the yeerks have not covered.)

Jake dug the shovel into the ground a bit and leaned on it. "What do you mean? And stop calling me Prince."

(Yes, Prince Jake.) I could have sworn there was a flicker of humor in Ax's eyes then. (I mean it is a very large facility. It is inconceivable that the yeerks could cover every possible entrance with the devices. We may also be able to make our own entrance in a remote part of the hotel.)

Tobias and Melissa entered the barn then, and the smaller bird flew to the floor and began to demorph. Melissa emerged in the gymnastics leotard that she was using as her morphing suit. She looked exhilarated after her first solo flight. "That is so awesome." She sobered a little then and breathed, still smiling in a way I hadn't seen her do since even before we met Elfangor and this all started, back before she realized that her parents didn't seem to love her. Something had changed in her in the last day. She had a purpose now, a way of helping, and it had reinvigorated the girl. She was still very quiet, but she seemed more alive than before. "What's going on?"

"We're just discussing how to enter the resort with all the security." Rachel responded while stepping over to hug the girl. "Are you okay? How was gymnastics?"

"It was uhhh... hard." Melissa responded quietly, glancing at the ground in hesitation. "How do you do it?" She looked up to Jake. "How do you sleep with that... that thing... in your brother? How do you sit at the same table as him? I couldn't... sit there... last night. I told them I wasn't hungry. I... don't think they noticed."

"Because I have to." Jake held the shovel tightly in one hand while he looked to the girl. "Because if Tom had the slightest hint that I knew what he was, we'd all be caught. I'm sorry, Melissa, but if you want to help your parents, you have to keep it together around them and not let on. It's just something you have to do."

"She is." Rachel retorted, sticking up for her friend. "She's handling it. It just takes some time to get used to." She looked like she immediately regretted the phrasing.

"I won't ever get used to it." Melissa spoke in close to a whisper. "But I'll handle it." When she looked up, there was the exact same determination that had been on every one of our faces during this war. "Because I have to. Because they're my parents, and I'm going to help them." Even as quiet as her voice was, there was a determination that I recognized, because I felt the same way about my mother when I thought of freeing her.

Jake looked satisfied as he nodded. "Okay. Now we need to find our entrance. Which probably means a new morph." I expected him to ask Cassie if she had any ideas, but he looked to Ax instead. "They'll probably strike when all the leaders are together, which means at the banquet on monday night. We need to scout that room out today, which means getting in there as soon as possible."

"What about David?" Rachel demanded. "Did you just forget about him? We have to find him before he does something stupid."

"No we don't." Jake responded quietly. When we all looked at him, he took a breath. "Because he already did something stupid." With no further warning, Jake pivoted and brought the shovel around in a homerun swing for the fences. The metal head of the shovel slammed with incredible force into the side of Cassie's face with a crash. She was spun and knocked to the ground with a cry as Jake flipped the shovel around in his hands and pushed the blade of the shovel against her throat. "Isn't that right, David?"

The rest of us stared in stunned incomprehension for a moment, until Cassie started to laugh a little. Her face was bloody and bruised from the shovel, and she was a stiff with the edge of the shovel against her throat. Still, she chuckled. "How'd you figure it out, Prince Jake?" She said it mockingly and I realized that Jake was right. That wasn't Cassie, it was David.

"You made three mistakes." Jake gritted his teeth and kept the shovel where it was. "First you called the fox a him and said your dad picked it up. Cassie's been caring for that fox for three days, it's a female and her mother brought if from the Gardens where it was sneaking in. Second, you didn't talk or ask about Melissa's feelings about all this. Cassie would have." He paused then before finishing. "And the last mistake you made was assuming I didn't know my own friends. Now..." He pressed the shovel down tighter. "Where is Cassie?"

"Oh..." David answered cagily. "She's around. She's busy." Cassie's eyes bulged a little as the shovel was pressed tighter to her throat. "What are you going to do, mighty Jake? Are you going to order psycho Rachel to kill me? Is that what you're going to do?"

Rachel, looking furious, almost pushed Jake aside as she glared at the form on the ground that looked like her best friend. "Where is she, David!? Where's Cassie? What the hell did you do with her?"

Before David could respond, Tobias said tersely. Cassie's dad's coming out here. I don't think you want him to see... this.

Growling, Jake raised the shovel just slightly. "Morph. I want you to be something small. A bug of some sort. Do it, David. We'll talk about this later. You're going to tell us where Cassie is. Ax, join Tobias, you guys head out, we'll join you in the field." Ax began to morph even as Jake finished. Before he could flap up, Jake leaned over and whispered something to Rachel, who moved to Ax and passed the message along.

Raising an eyebrow almost challengingly, David slowly looked to Rachel before starting to obey. Cassie's form shrank and changed. Suddenly we realized he wasn't becoming himself. He was going straight into cockroach form. With a startled look, Jake glanced to Ax for answers before asking for himself. "How... how are you doing that?" He demanded from the boy. "You can't morph straight from one morph to another."

There was silence as David shrank from Cassie's body straight into the small bug, then as the tiny creature waved its feelers around, he responded, sounding amused. (You can't. I can. A little gift from a friend to even the score. It is six... I mean seven to one.) He paused as though considering something. (Actually, what do you know? I do mean six.)

Rachel furiously raised her foot to stomp down on the bug, but Jake caught her knee. He nodded for Ax and Tobias to take off, and they did. "Where is she, David?" He sounded more angry than I had seen him before. His lips were tight and his hand shook a little as he stopped Rachel from squashing the cockroach.

The door opened before David responded, and Jake put the shovel aside, then stooped, picking the bug up in his hand and holding it tightly. We all looked to where Cassie's dad stood in the entrance. The man smiled while he stepped inside and headed for the fox cage. "Hey, guys. Where's Cassie? I need her help with this girl."

"Uhh." Rachel winced and looked to Jake, who shook his head blankly and just held his hand in a tighter fist.

I sighed and spoke up, since lying to adults seems to be my specialty. "We were just looking for her. We're supposed to meet for..." No way he'd believe homework study. "... she's supposed to help us get into the Gardens so we can try that new roller coaster."

"Oh that one's great. You've gotta try it out." Cassie's dad grinned before sobering with a cough, like he realized he was supposed to be the adult. "But you know Cassie isn't supposed to take advantage of her mother's work to get her friends inside. You'll have to pay like everyone else." He paused before offering. "Maybe she realized that and is going to meet you inside. If you see her, tell her that I need her help."

"Sure, yeah." Jake nodded and started for the door with the rest of us following him out.

Melissa hesitated, like she was distracted by something, and then moved. As we passed outside, she spoke quietly. "He's... talking to me. He says you don't accept new people, that... he's... just defending himself."

Rachel growled. "We don't accept psychos that kidnap our friends." She glared at Jake's fist. "Where's Cassie, David? Where is she?"

The response was a moment in coming. (What makes you think I'll tell you?)

"You won't have to." Jake's knuckles were white from resisting the urge to squish the bug in his hand. "We'll take care of that. Ax and Tobias are already working on that. We'll find our entrance, then meet them and take care of this."

Feeling left out, I shook my head. "What do you mean, Jake? What are they doing? I thought you sent them to the field."

Jake responded calmly. "I just wanted David to think that so he'd think he still had an advantage. Ax and Tobias are going to Erek's house to get something."

"Erek has some kind of mind reading device?" I felt like I was being slow, missing something obvious.

"You might say that." Jake looked at his fist and smiled grimly. "He's supposed to be a controller, so he has access to the yeerk pool. If he can get down there, I'm pretty sure there's a yeerk down there that would like to know if something happened to Cassie, and would be glad to sort through David's head to find the answer." I realized he was talking about Aftran, the yeerk that Cassie had sort of made friends with, who claimed not to want to dominate humans. Aftran had kept our secret after pulling them from Cassie's mind, and had released the young girl who had been her host.

(No!) David cried out from inside Jake's hand. (You can't make me a controller. You wouldn't! You'd ruin everything! You can't do that! You can't cross that line! You can't!)

Shaking his head, Jake closed his eyes before holding his hand up to stare at the creature in his palm. His voice was hard. "You attacked Cassie, David. You crossed the line first. You made us your enemies. Now you can deal with it." He looked to the rest of us. "Let's go. We'll carry him with us. And we'll get answers... one way or another."


	12. The Discovery Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

(Jake man, are you sure about this whole yeerk thing?) I asked as the four of us flew toward the resort. Rachel had the matchbox containing David in her beak. I had a feeling that it was hard for her not to just swallow the thing and be done with him. The feeling came from my incredible intuition and from her telling us exactly that repeatedly. (Call me paranoid, but I don't really like the idea of having a yeerk in the head of someone who morphs better than we do. And speaking of which, how does he ignore the no going from one form straight to another rule anyway?)

(I did. During the crocodile crap.) Rachel's voice came from her position to the right and below me. On Jake's order, Rachel was flying close enough to the ground that David wouldn't have time to get into a bird morph if he slipped free, but high enough up that he'd probably kill himself if he fell from that height. He could always go from cockroach to fly, but if he went from something small to something smaller, we could probably catch him easily. That's why Jake was flying above and behind her in perfect dive position. Nothing David could possibly morph to would beat a peregrine in a dive.

I adjusted my flight to bring me closer to Rachel's left side, though still a good hundred yards off. (David isn't morphing uncontrollably. He's going straight to one form into any other one he wants. Explains how he disappeared so quick from the reptile exhibit. So what about it, Jake? The yeerk idea... it bugs me. How do we know she won't take this plump prize and run off for a promotion straight up the yeerk military. Hell, they might throw her a parade for something like that. Or whatever yeerks do.)

(Aftran could have turned us in before, Marco. She didn't, and she's the best chance we have at getting the answers out of David's head.) Jake sounded strained, and I knew how hard it was for him to maintain focus on the mission with Cassie missing.

Melissa flew ahead of all of us. I didn't know if that was because she remembered the way to the resort best from where we were or because she felt like talking about what to do about Cassie was more something the rest of us should talk about. Either way, we followed her all the way to the Marriot and I still had no idea if bringing the yeerk traitor into this was a good idea. Jake definitely thought it was, but there was no telling just how out of his mind he was right now. He and Cassie had an almost thing going on, and not knowing where she was or what had happened to her was making him crazy. I just didn't know how much it was affecting his judgement.

The resort stretched out below us. Everywhere you looked there were men in suits with radios in their ears talking to their lapels. The beach practically crawling with secret service. (Okay, guys, I know this is supposed to be a secret summit...) I just had to observe. (But it hasn't even started yet and there are probably news stations in Lithuania who have gotten word that something's going down.)

(Yeah, it isn't very... subtle.) Melissa agreed as she banked to the left to circle around toward the back of the resort where the golf course was. (There was only half these guys yesterday when we were out here. And it was almost impossible to get in then. Now...) She trailed off, sounding doubtful.

(And there'll probably be twice as many tomorrow.) Rachel's voice was grim. (They're not taking any chances. Which would make me feel a lot better if half those guys weren't yeerk puppets by now.) She followed Melissa around in a wide turn, with Jake and myself bringing up the rear.

We were halfway around, at the far backside of the golf course when it happened. At first it just looked like a heat ripple in the air above us that caught my eye. Then the ripple moved, and I got an idea of just how large it was. That's when I remembered where I'd seen that sort of ripple before. (Jake, look up. We've got company.)

The others craned their heads up and Rachel explained for Melissa's benefit after sighing. (Cloaked ship... big one... what are they doing?)

We flew in a quick circle, getting an idea of just how big this thing was. It was at least three times as large as the resort itself, and as it lumbered through the air, it became obvious that the central building of the Mariott was its destination. It wasn't that we could see the ship itself, but we could make out where the air didn't seem quite right as it moved through it. If we had been human, we wouldn't have seen a thing.

Finally, the four of us landed on the course at the farthest hole from the rest of the hotel. After demorphing, we peered up into the empty sky where we knew the ship was. "So we have a giant hostile alien ship settling into position over the building, and Will Smith is nowhere in sight." I looked back toward the sky thoughtfully. "I think we're gonna have to handle this one ourselves, Jake."

"Too bad." Rachel spoke while she held the matchbox that David was in tightly. "Because he's almost as cute as you think you are."

"I beg your pardon." I retorted, affronted. "No one's as cute as I think I am. It's a statistical impossibility. The only thing cuter than I think I am is how cute I really am."

"Congratulations." Rachel rolled her eyes as she pushed the matchbox open. "I think your ego just violated several laws of physics." She reached inside and plucked the cockroach out, tossing him into Jake's waiting hand. "What do we do with the turd?"

Jake was watching the sky as his hand closed around David. "If the yeerks are up there, we can't fly around scouting the place out. They'll have eyes on the building. We've got to get closer without flying, and find a way in that isn't a window or a door." He paused before looking down at his hand. "Are you ready to tell us where Cassie is?"

David was silent for a moment, and then he spoke with a voice brimming with arrogance. (Let's just say she's safe and she'll stay that way as long as I do. But you do one thing to me and she'll--)

"Shut up." Jake's hand shook a little and he glared at the bug. "Just shut up until you're ready to talk about where Cassie is. Marco." He gestured and I saw a coke bottle leaning against the tree where someone had left it. Walking over there I bent down and picked it up, offering it to him. Jake took it and dropped David inside before screwing the cap back on.

Finding himself trapped in the bottle, David sounded indignant. (Hey! What are you doing? You can't leave me here. What if you don't come back? I can't just be a bug trapped in a bottle!)

"Maybe you should've thought about that before." Jake replied coldly as he pushed the bottle under some weeds. "We'll come back for you, and find out where Cassie is. Right now you just stay put. If you're lucky we'll make it back before your two hours are up. If we don't..." He trailed off there, and I knew that missing Cassie was getting to him. The urge to choke answers out of the little rat had to be getting harder to resist by the minute, and it was probably a good thing that David didn't exactly have a neck to wring at that moment.

David was silent, and that unnerved me. I thought he should have been trying to make a deal or at least cursing us right then, but he was quiet, which in some way was worse. It meant he was thinking, or he already knew something we didn't.

Melissa and Rachel were looking to the sky when they both pointed suddenly. "Look!" Melissa cried out in that tone that just screamed that something bad was about to happen. Jake and I both looked up and sure enough, there was an odd yellow light in a nearly perfect circle all the way around the resort. It was obviously the edge of the ship.The light was only visible for a few seconds, and then it faded.

"What... was that?" Melissa asked softly, sounding worried. "That's umm... probably not good, huh?"

"Well it's definitely not good." Rachel replied while she started to step over to where the edge of the light had been. "Whoa... it's all staticky." I could see the ends of her hair sticking up a little, and stepped after her. The strange feeling spread over me as well, like when you rub your feet all over the carpet and just before you go to touch something.

Jake and Melissa both followed us cautiously, and just as Rachel was about to take another step forward, a thought-voice speak cried out. (Stop! Don't move closer!) At first I thought it was David, but then I saw Ax and Tobias landing about ten feet off ahead of us. Ax immediately began to demorph. (Do not step closer to the emnek field.)

"The what?" Jake asked as he stepped beside Rachel. "What are you two doing here? You're supposed to be at Erek's." Reflexively, he started to step forward, but Rachel grabbed one of his arms and I took the other to stop him. As frantic as Ax had sounded to make us stop, it was probably a good idea to listen.

(Couldn't find him.) Tobias replied. (The Chee seem to be out for now. The house is dark and no one answered.) He perched on a rock nearby, watching us. (We came to meet you here and saw that light. Ax-man's been freaking out ever since. He said we had to get down here before one of you touched it.)

"Touched what?" Rachel demanded. "The light is gone. There's nothing here. Just a weird static feeling."

Ax had finished demorphing by then and he trotted up to within a couple feet of us. (That is a side effect of the emnek field.) His voice was strained. (They shouldn't have had something like this. How could they have stolen it from the homeworld? They had just begun experimentation on a field half this size when our ship left dock. The yeerks couldn't have found a way to double the size without resolving the power to mass ratio of--"

Jake interrupted, sounding testy. "Ax! What is it? What is this emnek field? How dangerous is it?"

Ax looked like he was searching for words for a moment. (There are times on my homeworld when... our morphing technology is... unwanted. There are certain Andalite high command secrets that should not be accessed by other andalites, and even though no andalite would ever betray our military secrets, it was deemed... important to have a defense. You must understand it was only a measure to be taken on the highest classified materials that even knowing about could be dangerous to a young andalite off... exploring his new ship.)

"Yeah we get it, andalite espionage never ever happens. They just had to protect things in case never became almost never." Rachel spoke dryly. " Let me guess, you were just exploring and found one of their little test fields accidentally so they had to explain what it was so you didn't blow their secret new defense.)

(I...) Ax swiveled a stalk eye to stare at her for a moment, then sighed. (Yes, that is fairly accurate. I probably wouldn't have even been told that much, but my brother was a Elfangor said that the field wouldn't be perfected for some time. I can't understand how the yeerks could have it here.) He sounded hurt, and worried.

"So... ummm..." Melissa spoke the question we were all wondering. "What exactly... does it do?" She didn't look like she wanted to be anywhere near the field, even from what had been described already.

(If an unauthorized specimen moves through the field, the static feeling is a warning to turn back. If you take one more step forward, you will be scanned. If the scan detects more than one type of dna within you, it will... eliminate you through the same disintegration method used in the bio-filters at the entrances.)

"Wait..." I looked up and then back to Ax. "You're saying the yeerks just completely closed off the resort? No one with extra dna in or out?" Ax's look was enough of a reply, and I groaned. "Ohhh great. So we're stuck in here and Ax and Tobias are stuck out there."

"Which means even if we knew where Cassie was, the rest of us couldn't get to her until we get that field taken down." Jake clenched his fist and glared back at where he had left David.

"And..." Rachel finished. "They probably won't take the field down until after the banquet. Which isn't until Monday night."

Melissa took a reflexive step away from the field and away from the static feeling. I followed suit, just to be safe. She shook her head. "So we're stuck here today, tomorrow, and monday? How.. my parents might notice that. And how can we hide in this place that long with all this security around?"

"Yeah..." I sighed. "The Chee'll cover us at home if Tobias and Ax get to them. But we won't last an hour out here with all the paranoid guntoting guys swarming this place, let alone three days." I looked to Jake. "What do we do?"

Jake was quiet, lost in himself for a moment, and I nudged him until he answered. "Huh? Oh, we..." He sounded strained. "Ax and Tobias go find the chee and get us covered at home, then find Cassie." He stared imploringly at Tobias and Ax. "Find... Cassie. Figure out where she is... please. We'll... we'll follow the plan for now. We'll find our entrance, get inside, and scout it out. After that... we'll have to find an empty room to hunker down in." He sighed. "Which means bringing David with us."

"Awesome." I replied and looked at the resort. The others all looked at me like I was crazy, so I shrugged. "I always wanted to get a suite here. They run for like a thousand bucks a night. Now we've got an excuse to stay here for three days? This mission's looking better already."

"Let's just find our way in." Jake clapped his big hand on my back. "Before Marco says something else about liking the mission and the resort blows up or something."

"Oh yeah." I replied sarcastically. "Because every time I'm not terrified of a mission, it must be cursed."

Which, naturally, is the moment that someone yelled. "Andalite!"

The voice made all four of us hit the ground. We practically fell into the small ravine on the edge of the treeline where we had been talking to Ax and Tobias. We threw ourselves down so fast that I had to spit dirt out. I hissed. "So should I just go back to hating every mission and thinking we're going to die every time we poke our heads out?"

Jake lifted his gaze over the tip of the ravine, and I followed suit. We saw nine armed men running up to where we had just been. Ax and Tobias had both vanished already. One of them was calling in to report while the others began to sweep the area. A second later the man with the radio turned to his companions. "The visser wants this entire place swept. Inside and out, in case others got in before the field came down. Any animal you see, you toast it. Nothing living gets out of this area."

Quietly, Jake answered my last question. "Couldn't hurt."


	13. The Discovery Chapter Twelve

Sorry for the longer delay than there has been. Here's an extra length chapter to end this book for you, and as in the real series, it's a cliffhanger. And once more, thank you to EVERYONE for enjoying this story. I'm going to continue it, definitely. I hope you all remain interested and stay for the long haul after this bit. Also, SouthrnBelle, there is definitely several reasons for why David consented to morphing to cockroach, a couple of which are explained here. I hope you continue to enjoy it.

Edit: Originally I attributed questioning David's cockroach morph to atlastme when it was southrnbelle. I'm sorry for the mistake.

Now, here's the climax to The Discovery.

Chapter Twelve

With the human-controllers about to search the entire area, we had to get out of there fast. But we had to do it in a way that wouldn't attract attention and would get us far enough away within the time that we had in morph. Plus there was the fact that Melissa only had a couple morphs.If we wanted to start a fight, there was almost no doubt we could take them, but everyone else on the grounds would be alerted. And if hiding out for three days here when they didn't know we were there would be hard, doing it when they were hunting us would have been impossible.

We watched them start to spread out, and Jake was quiet before hissing to Melissa. "Go small, the bug morph. Ca--" His throat caught for a moment. "Cassie got you a bug morph, right?" When Melissa nodded, Jake turned to Rachel and me. "While she's doing that, you both do your rat and mouse morphs. Melissa and I will hitch a ride on each of you." His urgent whisper grew more quiet as we heard the man crashing through the trees off to our left, and we all started to morph.

I felt the changes begin and scrunched down deeper against the dirt while the controllers continued to sweep the area. The first thing to change was my nose, which immediately shrank into a tiny pink dot. Then my ears ballooned out like dumbo's and perked up. So I had a little pink mouse nose and giant ears completely disproportionate to the rest of my body, which was mostly normal.

As soon as she saw that, Melissa had to cover her mouth to stop from giggling. Her silent laughter stopped however, as soon as she began her own morph. Her skin blackened and cracked like it was burnt, and she started to cry in surprise but I managed to get a hand up to cover her mouth. We both shrank at almost the same rate, and even as my hand began to shrivel into a much smaller paw, she got control of herself and nodded.

Black gossamer wings pried their way out of her back, and I quickly stuck my teeny rat tongue out at the girl and crossed my already beady eyes to make her focus on me instead of what was happening. Becoming a fly is never a happy process, but if Melissa could actually see herself, it would have been much worse. As it was, all she had to witness was her hands changing in front of her and the sound of her organs and bones grinding.

It was much easier to hide now that we were getting so small. The small ditch that was barely able to hold the four of us was suddenly more than large enough, and the leaves that moments ago had been smaller than my hand were now as big as a car. The noises of the searches grew louder as my hearing grew more accute, but I knew I was getting safer by the moment.

Thankfully, my own morph was one that I'd done before. I'd morphed the mouse along with Ax to sneak into this girl's party when she forgot to invite me. Only it turned out she didn't forget so much as refuse to since she held a grudge over something I was totally way less mature. As soon as they found out I wasn't coming, every other girl in our class blew the house down in a collective gasp of disappointment. Or maybe the veleek tore through the roof, I forget which exactly.

By then I was almost completely a mouse. There was only two things missing, and then I felt the odd sensation of my long tail swooshing out of my butt. That was one thing down, so the only thing missing were the mouse instincts, which-- RUUUUUUUUUNNN! FOR THE LOVE OF CHEESE, MICE BABES, AND ANNOYING SCREECHING OLD LADIES RUUUUUUUUUUUUUUN! FLEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDE! - Oh there they were.

The second the panicky mouse instincts kicked in, I nearly darted out into the open in my frantic attempt to run away from whatever I was running away from. Luckily I retained enough of my own senses to restrain that urge, and instead began to quickly sniff the air all around me like a hyperactive, well, mouse. There was another creature behind me, and I spun around to find Rachel in full rat morph. Her nose sniffed me quickly as I sniffed her. We circled a little warily. She was bigger than me, but was she an enemy I could run from?

(If you two are done?) Jake's voice cut in and I saw two miniscule houseflies sitting on an suv sized twig next to us. Sadly, my first instinct was to check if they were food, but I curtailed that quickly enough. Jake went on, sounding tense. (We need to get out of here before those guys fry you two. Come on, I'll take Marco. Melissa, you grab onto Rachel.) One of the flies shot off the twig into the air at his words and then came at me. The mouse brain screamed bloody murder at me for sitting still, and I knew Rachel had to feel similarly. But I stayed in place and flinched as Jake perched on my back, clinging to my fur with his little fly legs.

(All this rat wants to do is find something to eat and hide, preferrably at the same time.) Her voice sounded a little shaky, and I knew the fear of being caught wasn't helping the terrified prey instinct. But she stayed still and waited while the other fly took off from the twig. It overshot Rachel by a good two feet and then spun around in a complete three sixty in mid-air before shooting straight up into the air. The fly passed between two close branches and flipped around again before descending in a display of aeriel acrobatics that would make any trapeeze artist quit in shame. Finally, Melissa's voice came through. "Whoooooaaayeeaaahh! Holy crap, holy crap, jeeeeze!" The fly found the middle of Rachel's furry back and landed, as Melissa continued. "That's incredible, that's... the fly, it... it..."

"Flies?" I supplied, bemused. She was right though. They may be small and disgusting and not really get all that far in the long scheme of things, but for their relative size, nothing can dance through the air like a fly. Up, down, forward, backward, hovering, upside down, any direction you've thought of the fly can do. And it can go from one to another immediately, without a half seconds pause. The most advanced acrobatic flying machine man has ever built looks like a lumbering jetliner next to the fly.

Rachel and I moved to where we had stashed the bottle with David in it and began to nose it forward, rolling it along the ground while the cockroach inside remained silent. I had no idea what the boy was up to, but the longer he was quiet the more suspicious I got. He didn't even complain as he was jostled and tossed around inside.

(Don't worry about it, Melissa.) Rachel told her friend. (We know exactly how you feel. It's amazing how well those little bugs move. Now hold on tight.) She warned and then darted forward through the underbrush. I followed just behind her and we ran, avoiding the lumbering humans where we had to. They had weapons that could fry us in an instant, but the mouse and rat instincts working with our human brains made it easy to stay out of their sight. It was a little harder having to go slow enough that Jake to stick to my back, but we still managed it.

It took about forty minutes of flinching behind every tree and bush and hiding under any clump of grass that stuck up higher than the rest, but we finally made it to the edge of the main building. Rachel and I huddled against the wall while we panted and sniffed the air. Jake took off and flew up a bit. (I think we're near the service entrance into the kitchen. Let's see if we can get in that way.)

Under Jake's direction, we crept along the wall. Rachel pushed the bottle from the end, sliding rather than rolling it. As we moved, David finally broke his silence. (You know...) He said almost too casually. (I could easily call out for help from those humans. Or just yell 'rat!' and destroy your chances here.)

(You could.) Jake responded with forced calm. (But if you do that, we're just as likely to be squashed or captured as we are, if not moreso. You're already a bug under glass. I think if we had to get caught, knowing you're on that pier with us might make me feel at least a little bit better.)

(Maybe.) David's tone was annoyingly cryptic, and he fell silent again. I wasn't sure why he stayed quiet, or even why he had willingly gone into cockroach morph when Cassie's dad had been at best a minute away from the barn. Maybe he was just a coward at heart and wasn't willing to take the beating that Jake could have given him with that shovel before the man would have gotten there. Or maybe he wasn't ready to test that Jake would risk him getting away rather than testing Cassie's dad with the truth, or even taking him prisoner as well. Someone as crazy as David had already shown himself to be probably didn't think along the same lines that we did.

We hunkered down in the tall grass near the kitchen door where a black suited man stood on guard duty. It took almost ten minutes of waiting, and Jake was about to get cause a distraction when the door opened and one of the kitchen boys stumbled out carrying a pot of dirty grease. He almost dropped it and the security guy grabbed the other end and helped him lug the thing a few steps away around the side of the building. It was the only opening we needed, and Rachel and I darted up the little ramp, shoving the bottle along with us.

Just inside the doorway, the kitchen was a madhouse. People were walking every which way, and it was only going to be a matter of seconds before we were noticed. Luckily, the door a few feet away was open partway and we darted to it after knocking the bottle ahead of us. Then we slipped inside just as the back door opened and the kitchen boy came back.

Within, we found ourselves in something just over the size of a closet. White uniforms were hung up or folded on nearby shelves. Melissa and Jake flew up, buzzing to the top of the small room and then down again to check it out. (I think it's big enough for everyone...) Melissa reported after flying the length of it. (Barely. We could take the clothes anyway...)

(Great.) I responded and started to demorph. The process was slow, since we had to be careful not to squish each other or knock anything over and attract attention. Eventually though, we were four very cramped teenagers in a tiny closet space that somehow seemed a lot smaller now that we were full size. I grunted. "This is so not how Agent 47 does i-oww!" I hissed in pain, because someone's elbow had just dug into the side of my head. "Watch it, that's my ear you just gouged."

"Sorry." Melissa whispered and edged a little to the side. I could see her blush even in the very dim light, and was about to tell her it was fine when Jake started passing around white shirts and aprons.

It was tricky, but somehow the four of us managed to circus act our way through pulling on the new clothes. It involved a lot of hissed cursing and a few bruises, but we made it. After we were sorted, Jake put his hand on the knob. "Someone grab David and let's get out of here."

Melissa was next to him and nearest the side where the bottle was. She awkwardly leaned down and picked it up, then stayed like that for a long moment. Then she straightend up quickly and held the bottle up with a gasp. "He's gone!"

That made all three of us whip around and nearly kill each other in the close confines of the closet. Jake snatched the bottle and stared at it, then held it out for us to see. Sure enough, the lid was off and there was no sign of the cockroach. "Damn it!" Jake looked livid. "How the hell did he... how... he must have... while we were changing."

"But..." Rachel shook her head. "How did he get the lid off?" She looked as confused as I felt.

"I don't know..." Jake tossed the bottle down. "But we have to find him. Now. Come on." He pushed the door open and the four of us stepped right out into the brightly lit kitchen. Luckily it was so busy no one noticed us. We scanned all along the floor as we moved quickly past the tables and sinks, but there was no sign of the little cockroach. Or the big cockroach, for that matter.

We slipped around a lunatic chef screaming at someone for adding too much pepper into his pan of somethingatini and found our way to the hall. Just down from there, one of the black suited security men disappeared through a set of double doors. We looked up and down the hall almost frantically, then snapped back around at the sound of a muffled cry. It wouldn't have carried much further to anyone else, but we heard it.

Immediately, Jake started to run that way, gesturing for us to follow. "Come on, if he acquires a secret service man, he could just have us all arrested." We sprinted after him to the doors and pushed through. I wasn't sure what we were going to say or do if what was in that room wasn't actually David, but we went anyway. The idea of how dangerous the kid would be with the authority of the secret service behind him was enough to propel all of us right through the door.

On the other side, we found some kind of general conference room. It was mostly taken up by a large oak table with high backed chairs all around it. The walls were lined with elaborate glass windows. On the other side of the room past the table and near the coffee machine, David stood with his hand on the security man's forehead. The guy was kneeling as though he had been forced there somehow. We all came up short as the door fell shut behind us.

"David..." Jake spoke through gritted teeth, as he stepped around to the right. I followed him as Rachel and Melissa moved to the left along the other side of the table. I tried to see what was holding the security man in place, but he just seemed to be kneeling there from the boy's hand touching him. Jake went on, obviously struggling to stay calm. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Educating you." The response from David was just as cryptic as he had been through all of this. I saw Rachel start to morph Grizzly since she and Melissa were both out of the kneeling man's line of sight, behind him. David obviously noticed and laughed. "Gonna sic your cousin on me now?" He turned to glare angrily at Rachel. "You couldn't finish me when I asked you. You were too much of a coward, and I'm not giving you another chance."

He called Rachel a nasty name, and she almost leapt across the table at him. Jake and I were moving on his other side, but then we all came up short. Something was happening to the security man. The skin of his forehead seemed fused to David's hand. The boy lifted his palm and more of the man's forehead swooshed up between his fingers. The guy screamed as his eyeballs were drawn up to the top of his skull. His entire body seemed to be being drawn up into the boy's palm. While the four of us stared in horror, the man's head was swallowed completely into the hand, and the rest of his body was following quickly.

"Wh-what are you doing?!" Melissa was the one who found her voice first. She sounded mortified and terrified at the same time. It's a feeling I know well. Her fingers clutched the edge of the table as she stared with the same terror and confusion we all felt just then.

"I'm acquiring him." David's voice was dark, and he whipped around to glare furiously at Rachel as the last of the man's body was absorbed into him. "Because you couldn't do your job! You couldn't do the one thing I ever asked you to!" Jake had made it around the table as David stayed focused on Rachel. "I begged you to end it and you didn't! Now Crayak owns me!"

Rachel's voice held no end of disgust and anger at the boy who had just murdered in front of us. "What.. the hell... is a Crayak, you psychopath?" Fur kept rising on her skin, and I realized she was going all the way to grizzly this time.

David started to answer her when Jake leapt at his back. Almost impossibly fast, the boy whipped around. He morphed directly into the security man that he had just acquired and caught Jake's arm, whipping him around and slamming him down into the table. He'd gone from completely himself into full secret service morph in the time it took Jake to jump at him, and now he shoved his arm down hard against Jake's throat. "Little different with the shoe on the other foot, isn't it!?" Now he was the one holding Jake down.

Rachel was still morphing grizzly and I started to go gorilla, not that I knew how much good it would do against someone that could morph that fast. We didn't even know what kind of animals he already had, or what else he could do.

(Take him, Marco!) Almost, but not quite fully bear, Rachel lunged at the boy. Before she had crossed half the distance between them, an Andalite tail looped out from David's back and slashed her across the stomach three times in rapid succession. With a mighty crash, the bear fell into the table and smashed it, then lay still with a weak groan.

I took advantage of what I thought was David's distraction to try to grab his arm and lever it off of Jake by hurling him across the room. I got his arm all right, but then he morphed it around my grip into a giant pincer claw. It looked like a crab's claw, only much larger. Before I could pull back, it latched onto my arm and then tore through the ligament and muscle. There was a searing, unbelievable pain and a second later the claw cut right through my massive arm. I screamed out loud and in thought speak through the pain and then stared dumbly as it fell to the floor. I stood there, a one armed gorilla in shock for a second until David hit me with that same claw. The force of his blow worse than a truck and I was hurled backwards like a ragdoll, already falling into shock from the sudden loss of blood.

As I fell to the floor on the other side of the room, I could see Melissa frozen in shock, still fully human. I lay helplessly on the floor, bleeding out through what had once been my right arm. Rachel in bear morph was in worse shape than me, her heavy body heaving with her efforts to breath and stay conscious. Jake was pinned under David's arm, his face white as he fought against the lack of oxygen. He had been held in place against the table effortlessly while David had dispatched both Rachel and me as easily as he could have kicked aside a few kittens.

My vision was already going dark, filled with blotches I couldn't see through, and it was getting harder to keep my eyes open. (How...) I managed to get out, wanting to know how David could morph like that, how he was able to do everything he was doing.

"How?" David laughed, having removed the andalite tail and the giant claw. He looked like an ordinary thirty something year old fit man now, as he stared across the table at the paralyzed Melissa. "I told you how. I am Crayak's servant. I am the one animorph who saw beyond the war! I am the one of you who wasn't tricked by Jake's lies! I am the one human who Crayak cares enough about to grant me the power to do what I have to do! I am the one who is going to remove the yeerk infestation and the animorphs at once. I am the one that He sent back to finish the work here."

There was a silence, and then in words that seemed to fill the room in a way that I was sure that I would never understand, just before the darkness fully claimed me, David pronounced. "I am The One."

To be continued in Book 21: The Threat.

My name is Jake...


	14. The Threat Chapter One

Hey everyone, thanks for enjoying the story. I'm really glad you like the twist with David being The One. It should be a fun ride, so let's see where else the story takes us, shall we?

The Threat

Chapter One

My name is Jake. And that's about all I was going to have time to explain if I didn't figure out a way to stop David from choking the life out of me. His arm was like a lead weight pressing relentlessly down on my neck. I had just seen him take down Rachel as a grizzly and Marco as a gorilla with barely an effort, literally while holding me with one arm.

You know the story, or you should. If not, that entire last paragraph probably confused the heck out of you. The short of it is that my friends and I are fighting a losing war against a race of parasitic slug creatures called Yeerks. They crawl into a person's head and literally take over. They control your every movement and word. They decide what you look at. You are a prisoner inside your own mind. It's sheer and utter torture. I can say this without a doubt, because I have been there. I was a controller, what we call a person who is taken over by a yeerk, for a very brief time. My brother Tom is also one of them. I swear every time I see him that I will free him someday. That's what a yeerk does, it takes over a person completely. They could be in anyone you know. The teacher that you like, the coach that you don't, or even your mailman. Anyone could be a controller.

The five of us, me, my friend Marco, my cousin Rachel, her friend Cassie, and this other guy Tobias were walking through the construction site next to the mall when an alien ship landed. The dying being onboard, an Andalite named Elfangor, told us about the yeerk invasion and gave us the power to morph into any animal that we can touch. That is our only weapon in this battle. We've been fighting ever since. We found and were joined by Elfangor's little brother, Aximili. We call him Ax. Somehow, it was decided that I was the leader. I'm still convinced I got the job because everyone else was able to say 'not it' faster than me. But I do what I can, and I try to keep my people alive and sane. Sometimes sane is harder than alive in this war.

For months, that was it. The six of us against an all but invisible alien invasion. Then, a couple days ago that changed. The blue box, the device that was used to give us our powers was found by a girl named Melissa. She was Rachel's friend, or at least she had been before Rachel, along with the rest of us, was so distracted by the war. I guess she was an okay girl. She was usually quiet, and it was kind of easy to feel bad for her since we knew both her parents were controllers.

Melissa found the box, and then a boy named David stole it. We retrived it just before Visser 3, the leader of the yeerk invasion force on earth and the only Andalite-controller in the galaxy would have taken it. Melissa saw us demorphing, and we had to explain things to her. She promised to keep our secret, and then chose to fight alongside us, something she could do since we had the box. We gave her the morphing power. And it was a good thing we suddenly had a new ally, because our friend Erek, part of the android race called the Chee, let us know that a summit meeting of all six top world leaders was taking place in our town in a couple days at the local Mariot. We needed all the help we could get to stop the yeerks from infesting them.

That wasn't even all our problems. Somehow David took the morphing power from the cube. At least that's what we thought he did, but now I'm not so sure. He attacked us, and ranted about a being named Crayak that we've never heard of. But more confusing than that, he was able to break the rules of morphing. He could morph straight from one morph to another, which wasn't supposed to be possible, and he could combine them, morphing only partway or one specific bodypart. That shouldn't have been possible either.

David also did something to Cassie. She was missing, and he posed as her, but we found him out. We had no idea where she was, so when we had to go on our mission to find an entrance into the Mariott, we brought him with us. Four of us went, me, Marco, Melissa, and Rachel. Tobias and Ax were supposed to find our one yeerk ally in this war so we could get answers from David's head. We thought he was our prisoner, but he was playing us. As soon as we arrived and were trapped inside the grounds by the yeerk field that would disintegrate us if we crossed it, he turned on us. He escaped and we found him in one of the conference rooms of the resort literally absorbing a secret service agent into himself. He wasn't acquiring the body the same way we did. Somehow David was taking the entire animal or person into his own body and shifting to that whenever he wanted to.

He had changed into Cassie before, and the implications of that terrified me. Was she trapped inside of David? Was there a way to free her? There had to be. That was all there was to it. We had to find out what this Crayak thing he kept ranting about was, and we had to free Cassie and anyone else David had absorbed. First though, I had stop myself from passing out.

Rachel was down and so was Marco. I was pinned against the table, and Melissa seemed frozen in a panic over what she had just seen. I couldn't really blame her, since I was pretty much in shock too. Rachel and Marco had both gone down in seconds, with barely a hint of effort from David. I didn't even know how much longer either of them would survive with their bloodloss unless they came to enough to morph out. I would have yelled at them to do it, but I couldn't breath through the arm choking me.

It would have been nice to expect Melissa to back me up, but she was an unknown. She'd only been in one battle with us and she lost control of the morph which led to David getting away. It wasn't her fault, but still, I didn't know how she'd act now. I had to move. "Egghhgn... David..." I managed to say, and I felt his arm relax very slightly. He wanted to hear what I had to say. I forced my head up enough to look at him and saw the arrogant glower from the face of the secret service man that David had morphed into. I matched his glare with mine and forced the words out slowly. "I bet... all your morphing tricks... didn't teach you... to take away your weak spot." As his eyes opened slightly in confusion, I drove my knee as hard as I could up between his legs, slamming it into the space that no guy in the world will ever ignore being hit in.

As David's eyes shot open in agony, I shoved my arms out hard and caught him in the shoulders. He was in too much pain to focus on morphing anything for the moment, and I took advantage of that to get to my feet. "Rachel!" I yelled, not caring who heard at that point. "Morph out! Marco, morph out! Do it!" Even as I spoke, I started my own battle morph. Orange fur sprouted up all over my body and I started to contort as my spine changed, becoming more suited for something on four legs instead of two. I started to grow bigger, ripping through the cheap kitchen aid clothing we'd stolen. It was slow, all too slow. David, tears in his eyes from the pain, was already starting to change himself. He was starting to get bigger, and somehow he always seemed to morph faster than we could. Even staggered and half crippled by the blow I'd inflicted, he'd be done long before I was.

I was only halfway through the morph when David staggered to me. He was half in the form of the security man and half something I didn't even want to think about, some strange predator gorilla creature. The inch long canine teeth that filled his mouth as he grimaced seemed to drip saliva as they anticipated the killing bite. I was helpless, still midway between boy and tiger when he leaned over me and snarled. "Morphing, Jake? Morphing to the tiger. I beat the tiger. I can beat it again. I beat you. I beat all you. Then you cheated. Keep morphing, Jake. Keep morphing so I can kill the tiger. Can't kill humans, but I can kill the tiger. Do it. Morph!"

He was rambling again, about things I didn't even know about. His words didn't make any sense, because he was talking as though we'd fought him before, which prior to the zoo yesterday, we hadn't. I never fought him as the tiger. He was clearly insane, and I briefly felt a little sorry for him before remembering what he had probably done to Cassie. Then I got mad again and started to finish the morph to tiger. He wanted a fight, I'd give him what he wanted. I'd rip and tear at him until he begged to tell me where Cassie was. I could even feel the predator's grace of the tiger, the calm of the perfect hunter. I wanted that confidence right now. I wanted to lose myself in the tiger's instincts so I could make David hurt.

But as I morphed, I felt David's grip on me get tighter. He was fully in the form of his strange predator gorilla now, as he put his foot on my neck, the neck of the tiger. I tensed and tried to roll to my feet, but the foot held me in place as easily as he had held me on the desk. David crowed. (You see, Crayak!? He's not that unbeatable! I've done it easier than the last time! I told you I could beat him again! He's pathetic, look! Look at him, he can't even move!) I struggled and kicked but it was ineffectual. I saw familiar black spots as my vision started to go out. David leaned down, as though eager to watch the pinned tiger's struggles. (I bet you'd like some help right now, huh Jake? Too bad you let everyone down again. Too bad you failed again. Too bad--)

He was interrupted by another thoughtspeak voice. (You know what, David? You're a real jerk.) And then Melissa in the form of some kind of doberman, lunged right over the desk and latched onto the same spot that I had kneed earlier in his other form. Her teeth clamped onto the gorilla creature there and David let out an impossible howl of agony in both thought speak and outloud. I couldn't imagine the pain he was going through just then, but I didn't care. I scrambled to all four paws as his foot lifted form mine and instantly took a quick slash at his stomach. My claws ripped through him as he staggered and almost fell.

Melissa growled and clamped her jaws tighter against the gorilla creature's sore spot, and I heard flesh tearing as David's howl of agony echoed over the walls. His arm came up finally and slammed into the doberman, knocking it across the room with a yelp. But I was on him then, clawing and slashing at every bit of the little psycho I could reach. Blood poured from my claws, and I ripped into his shoulder with my teeth. Then he managed to push me away from him and across the floor. I rolled and sprang back to my feet, teeth bared. David, injured and staggering, looked around the room. Rachel and Marco had both managed to demorph, and Melissa had picked herself off the wall and was pacing back toward us. Taking in the odds, David chose to turn and hurl himself out the window, morphing into something small as he went.

Rachel ran to the window, starting to grow larger as she moved. I shook my head and began to morph out. (No, wait. Security's coming. Melissa.. where did you get...) I turned in her direction.

Sitting on her haunches, Melissa tilted the dog's head up to me and panted a little. (I couldn't sleep last night so I went for a walk. He belongs to our neighbor's down the street, I thought he might be useful because.. .well he always scares me, so he might scare the bad guys.) She paused, and then added. (Are dogs always this... incredibly happy, or is that just me after biting that turd?"

"Pretty much always." Marco answered, shuddering from the thought of what had almost just happened to all of us. "But the big grin on the rest of our faces? That's from the bite." He reached down and scratched Melissa behind the ears, and she perked up in enjoyment.

We heard running footsteps, and Rachel turned from the window, furious. "He's getting away! What do we do? Jake, he..." She looked too shaken to say the words fully. "He morphed Cassie... if he... if that man... is how he... acquires... Cassie might..."

"Stop it, Rachel. We'll save Cassie. We will." By then I was fully myself. Standing quickly as the tromping footsteps of panicked security grew closer, I looked to Melissa. "I need you to get out there and distract them. Have fun, they won't shoot a dog, they'll just try to catch you. Run around and lead them away. We'll meet you... on the seventh floor, by the ice machine, okay?"

She hesitated, looking doubtful, which was a feat for a dog, then she agreed. (Okay, Jake... Rachel... Marco. Be careful.) Then she scrambled around and barked loudly before tearing for the doors. She went through them into what sounded like an entire herd of security men, barked loudly again, and then we heard her running away down the hall while the men chased her.

"Now what are we doing, dude?" Marco asked while checking the door to make sure we were alone temporarily.

"David's trapped here by the yeerk force field the same as we are." I answered. "He can run, but we're going to find him. And when we do, we're going to make him tell us how to help Cassie. If he really absorbed her. If he really took her into himself..." I paused, then looked to them both squarely. "Then we will rip her free of him, no matter what it does to him in the process."


	15. The Threat Chapter Two

Sorry for the delay with this chapter. I had a bit of writers block and also had to take a break for the real work thing. Here you go, and as always I hope you enjoy it.

Chapter Two

It took a good twenty minutes to find our way up to where I'd said we would meet Melissa. We had to wait for the security and resort employees to be drawn away by the cavorting and running dog, and then we went slow so we wouldn't run into anyone else. The last thing we wanted to try to explain was why three kids in gym shorts and a leotard were sneaking around the hotel. It was too bad the hotel had been cleared out of guests, or we could have posed as kids heading out to the pool. As it was, we barely managed to stay out of sight and get all the way up

"This place is impressive." Marco remarked while he looked around the hall as we slipping into the small area where the ice and soda machines were. "Remind me to come back here once they're accepting real guests again."

"How are you going to afford it?" Rachel asked. She was drumming her fingers along the machine, peeking out into the hall for any sign of Melissa. "You can't sell your brain to science, they'd charge you some sort of pollution tax. And you don't exactly have the free time to get a job."

Marco groaned. "Awww man, you see, Jake? This is what I'm talking about. This whole animorph thing isn't just a life and death struggle for the planet, it interferes with my ability to start saving up money for a real car."

"Marco..." I shot him a look. "We can morph into birds and fly. What do you want with a car?"

He looked exasperated, like I was slow. "Duhhh, we've been through this before. Birds can't cruise for chicks. Birds can't rev an engine and scare slow old women into the other lane. Birds can't feel the wind in their hair as they shoot down the freeway. But most of all, there is no room in the bird for the hot girl screaming over the radio about how amazing the ride is."

"I've seen you drive, Marco." I told him flatly. "The only thing any girl in your car would scream is 'oh god oh god why are you on the sidewalk and what did we just hit'." I laughed a little as he elbowed me, then we both looked up at the sound of running feet. Rachel ducked back inside just as the heavy doberman trotted into the space with us.

A minute later all four of us were huddled in the relatively small area, keeping an eye out for anyone coming our way. Thankfully, with the resort all but deserted except for the first couple levels, we were fairly safe for now. Melissa had led everyone in circles for a while before hiding in one of the maid carts. After that she just ran up the stairs when no one was looking.

Rachel voiced the question we were all thinking. "How do we find David?"

Marco added. "And find a way to save the world leaders. Don't forget that part." He was sucking on an ice cube he'd taken from the machine. "Man I wish Ax were here. He could do some andalite tech stuff and get free soda from this thing." He swatted the side of the coke machine. Ax and Tobias had been left outside of the forcefield that the yeerks had erected around the building, trapping the four of us inside.

"That's not important now." Rachel argued. "Did you see what that jerk did to that security guy? He morphed Cassie before. If she's trapped... inside..." Her voice faltered a little, but her angry glare remained steady.

"It's still important." Marco shook his head. "If we don't stop them from infesting the world leaders, our entire ballgame is gone. I mean, not to say Cassie isn't a priority, but we still--"

He was cut off by Rachel punching the soda machine. "Dammit, Marco!" She was seething. I knew she wasn't really mad at Marco, but he was a convenient target for her worry over her best friend. "We save Cassie, and that's it. That's our job now."

When Marco opened his mouth to object again, Rachel started to grab for his collar angrily. They were both interrupted by Melissa, who spoke quietly, almost to herself. "Can you just both be right and let us figure out how we're going to save Cassie and stop the yeerks?" She paused, realizing our attention was on her, then shrugged a little. "I mean that's what we have to do, right?"

"Melissa's right." I said, taking charge. "We have to stop David and the yeerks both. We don't know why David's here, or why he can do what he's doing. What we do know is that we can't sit here by the soda machines all night. We need to get into one of the empty rooms." I took a breath, and then stepped into the quiet hall. "I'll do a small morph and get into the room, then let the rest of you in. Once we're out of sight, we can decide what to do."

It didn't take long to get into our temporary home. The room was pretty big, by hotel standards. It was larger than the ones I was used to staying in. There were two king sized beds on opposite sides of the room, with a heavy dresser in between them. A large screen flat panel television was on the wall. Needless to say, Marco wasn't exactly suffering. He was flipping channels on the television, while glancing at a room service menu with his feet up on the bed. "Now this is what I'm talking about. This is how we should be living."

I just shook my head at him. "You can't order room service, Marco. They know there's no guests here. Get serious, we've got two different missions. We've gotta pull them both off somehow. It'll probably involve splitting up, so I need to know who wants to search for David, and who wants to scout the banquet room."

Rachel, who was standing by the balcony, spoke up firmly. "I'm going after David." The look on her face challenged if we wanted to argue with that. None of us did.

Finally settling on an NBA game, which he muted, Marco nodded. "I can take Melissa and we can scout around downstairs, get the layout of the place and try to figure out how the yeerks are gonna do the snatch." I opened my mouth hesitantly to object. I wanted to help Cassie, but I thought I should be where the yeerks were. Marco just tossed the remote at me. "Give it up, Jake. You know you won't be able to focus on the yeerk plan while you're worried about Cassie. You'd just stare at the room with that big dumb head of yours while you obsess over pretty dark eyes and--" He stopped talking as I threw the remote back at him.

Sitting cross legged on the other bed, Melissa fidgeted with her hands nervously. "I can go with Marco... I guess..." She didn't look like she wanted to leave Rachel, since the other girl was pretty much the only one of us she'd known before all of this started. It had only been a couple days, and she still wasn't exactly comfortable with the whole thing.

I hesitated, then finally agreed. "Fine, but be careful, both of you. We can head out later once things calm down." Rachel started to object, and I shook my head at her. "David's not going anywhere. Not with that forcefield up. He's as trapped as we are. We have to wait. For now, we need to call Erek and get some of the chee to play our parts for a couple days."

Melissa looked to me while folding her hands in her lap to stop her compulsive fidgeting. "When you say play our parts... what do you mean, exactly?"

Before I could explain, Marco beat me to it. "You saw Erek. The rest of the chee are like him. Canine androids. They'll put up a hologram of you over themselves and basically be you while we're gone so that your parents and teachers don't know you're missing. It's convenient, but it's also a pain, because the Chee have this obsessive need to clean everything and my dad keeps getting used to it."

Smiling a little bit, barely visible with her chin in her arms, Melissa's tone was half serious. "But my room is already clean. Maybe they can clean out the garage. You know, if it makes them happy." I thought it was good, both that she was starting to be comfortable enough with us to joke, and that what was happening wasn't completely freaking her out. Or if it was, she was dealing with it, which is all any of us did.

Marco grinned back at her. "They do love cleaning out garages. Ask Jake's dad. He thought Jake was trying to bribe his way out of a bunch of D grades or something the last time we had to get the Chee to cover for us. Oh, and if your dad hates cleaning the gutters, they..." He trailed off then, realizing he'd spoken without thinking. "Ahhh, hell. Sorry, your parents aren't..."

"Way to go, Marco." Rachel shot him a glare while moving over to the bed with a concerned look. Both of Melissa's parents were controllers, and had been for some time. She had only just found out about them when all of this went down, but it had been clear to her for a long time that the people who were supposedly her mother and father no longer cared about her.

"It's okay." Melissa shrugged again and took a breath. She looked shaken, but tried not to let it get to her. "You can't keep walking on eggshells around me. My parents are... yeerks."

"Controllers." Rachel supplied, quietly while sitting on the bed.

Nodding, Melissa went on. "They're controllers. I want to free them, but right now we have to deal with this. I can... focus on this." She smiled again, an expression that seemed foreign to her face, and leaned her head on Rachel's shoulder. "Besides, I don't know if I could sleep at home again right now, knowing what they are. So this... you know... maybe being stuck here is a good thing?"

Looking from Melissa to Marco, I nodded and walked to the phone on the desk by the television. "Let me call Erek's place so our parents don't freak out. Then--"

"Then," Marco interrupted. "We find one of the four hundred and twenty channels on this thing that doesn't have anything to do with aliens or morphing, and raid the minibar for anything worth muching on. It's time for some black zen level vegging." He unmuted the tv, and then complained as Rachel snatched the remote from him.

They argued over that while I rolled my eyes and picked up the phone to call the King residence. After that I called home to tell my folks that I'd be there in an hour or so. My dad answered. "Jake? Where are you?" He sounded strained. "Is Rachel with you?"

I blinked and looked that way. "Yeah, She's here, why? What's up?" From the bed, Rachel looked up, confused.

My dad said something to my mom about Rachel being with me and how she should call Rachel's mom. Then he got back on the line with me. "Jake, you and Rachel need to come home right now."

I clutched the phone a little tighter. Had David done something? "What happened, Dad? What's going on?" Now Rachel was standing beside me, trying to hear with her head down by through the reciever.

There was a pause, and then my dad answered slowly. "Hurry up and bring Rachel with you, Jake. Your cousin was hit by a car. It's... really bad."

That threw me. "What? Hit by a car? Who?"

If anything, his voice was tighter. "They were out riding their bikes. The van couldn't stop in time." He paused and then coughed to hide his choked voice. "Jordan and Sara, Jake. Jordan's in critical condition. Hurry. Get Rachel back here. We don't know how much time there is until..."

He trailed off, and I raised my gaze to Rachel. Her eyes were wide with shock, so I knew she had heard. Her voice was thick with emotion. "Jordan..." Her sister was two years younger than she was. Sara was a couple years younger than that. "I have to go to the hospital. I have to go. I have..." She wasn't even thinking anymore, on her way to the door. Melissa and Marco had both stood quickly, confused.

My dad was saying something, but I didn't hear him. I stared after her. "Rachel... I don't think you can..." I looked out the patio doors, toward the invisible forcefield trapping us here.

Rachel was in my face in a second. "My sister is dying in the hospital and you want me to stay here?!" Her face was livid, and I knew she wanted someone to be furious at. She needed something she could affect, something she could do. It was all she could manage not to break down where she stood.

Feeling incredibly pained, I dropped the phone back to the receiver, and slowly put my hands out to Rachel's shoulders. My words felt hollow, and evil. This was her little sister. This was Jordan. "I think you have to, Rachel... I don't think you have a choice."


	16. The Threat Chapter Three

Hey there. Just for a second here I'd like to address netrat's possible concerns. I understand the potential for worrying about mary sues, so this isn't to say there's anything wrong with being concerned, but I thought it would be good to at least attempt to speak on the issue.

The last thing I want is to make Melissa a Mary Sue, in any way or fashion. However, I also have to avoid making her too INcapable. In an earlier chapter, Melissa's inexperience led to David getting away which has led to Cassie's current situation. So I wanted to give her something to try to counter that. It's a difficult scale to balance sometimes, and I hope to make her likeable, but not have her take over everything. That's why she was set to go with Marco rather than Jake so the focus could go to Jake and Rachel.

But again, I understand your concerns, so I'm going to address each point you brought up for what she's done in the last little bit. First, you said that Rachel and Marco were powerless against David but Melissa fights him off. This isn't exactly true, because Melissa simply didn't fight at first. Then she attacked David, distracting him just long enough for JAKE to fight him off. Second, you said that she kept the peace when Marco and Rachel were arguing. This is true. I don't think that giving someone traits such as talking people out of arguing is quite mary sueish, but I can understand the quick thoughts that it could turn out that way. I promise to be careful with it.

As for cynical Marco not being suspicious of her, there are several reasons for that not being shown. There's a lot going on right now, plus she's done nothing to warrant suspicion. He was ready to try to accept David before except things about that psycho struck him as wrong, understandably. Melissa on the other hand is quiet and as you said, accepting of a lot. Possibly because she's grown over the past year or so to recognize her parents lack of affection and as wild as it is, it's much easier for her to accept that her parents were taken over by alien space slugs than that they just for no reason stopped loving her. At least this she can affect, and understand. Marco is trying not to overly upset the girl yes, but she's also done little to nothing to EARN his skepticism, unlike David did before. I thought it better to do it this way than to drag out the 'will they or won't they trust her' schtic that's in my mind so incredibly cliche and aggravating.

I definitely agree that not every animorph should get along fully with every other one. That's part of their dynamic. So don't worry, she's not going to be loved by everyone and end up saving them all. At the end of the day, she's another animorph. But aren't all the animorphs special? They all stand out apart from being average, and I hope to make Melissa the same way, without making her 'mary sue'. I promise you now that she will not be the key to saving the world. She will not develop special powers no one else has. She will not be someone that everyone falls in love with. Some people reading the story might dislike her, and some might love her. That's what I hope for the most, because that's how all the animorphs are seen. Some love them. Some hate them. I promise you that this is not a story about Melissa. This is a story about Jake, Tobias, Rachel, Ax, Marco, Cassie, AND Melissa. She's part of a group, and I won't forget that.

Thank you for reading the story, and please continue to enjoy it. I definitely understand the concerns about ruining the story by making Melissa into a Mary Sue, but I promise to do everything I can not to let that happen. She will be special, but no more so than any of the others. She will succeed at some things and fail at others. Some people will like her and some people won't. Some characters will trust her, others will not. That's the same as can be said for any of the others, and that's my goal.

Thanks for listening to me ramble, and please don't take it as criticism or anything about your worry. I do completely understand it, and just wanted to take that excuse to address it as any worry anyone reading this might have. Thank you for giving me a reason to do so.

Here's the next Chapter. Enjoy, I hope.

Chapter Three

I stared at Rachel, and she glared back. In the background I could see Marco and Melissa both watching us, but not saying anything. Rachel looked like she might punch me, and I almost welcomed the idea. But I had to get her to start thinking. I hated myself for it, but there was no choice. "Rachel, if you go through that field, it'll kill you."

"I don't care!" Her face was inches from mine as she yelled at me. "I don't care, Jake! Jordan is my sister. I have to find a way to get to her. I have to... I..." Her voice choked off, as she couldn't find the words.

From the other side of the room, Marco shook his head. "There's no way. Even if you made it past all the paranoid security now, the field isn't just going to let you pass because you're worried. And the yeerks aren't going to call time out on taking over the world either. Not to mention whatever David's up to."

Rachel started to wheel on Marco, but I kept hold of her shoulders. "Rachel. Rachel! I know. I know you want to go to Jordan. We have to find a way out of this field, but right now... right now the only thing that you can affect and actually do anything about is this mission. Jordan is in intensive care. There is literally nothing you being there could do. You'd have to sit in a chair and wait. I promise you that we will find a way to get out so you can go there, but we have to focus on this first. We have to figure out where David is. Marco and Melissa can handle staking out the banquet room, but I need your help with David. Jordan we can't help right now. Cassie we can. Please help me."

I wasn't sure it would be enough at first, as Rachel continued to glare at me for a moment. Then she sighed and lowered her gaze briefly before nodding uneasily. "Okay. Let's go bag that asshole." I squeezed her shoulders, and she shot me a brief grateful look before hugging me quickly. It was an entirely unRachel like thing to do, especially in front of Marco. So I knew the news about her sister's accident had hit her hard.

Looking up, I nodded to Marco. "I don't think we have time to wait for everything to quiet down. We have to figure out what their plan is as soon possible, so we can make our own.You guys go on, we'll be fine. Meet us back here in an hour and a half."

Melissa took the time to hug Rachel, and then the two of them headed out. Once they were gone, I turned back to Rachel. "Let's think. What would David be doing here? Assume he's trapped like us, except he can be any of the security people, or anyone else he gets his hands on."

Rachel ran both her hands back through her long blonde hair with a long sigh. "I don't know. If he could do all that before, why did he let himself get caught at the barn? Why did he act so terrified of the Visser? Why did he act trapped for as long as he did? None of this makes any sense at all. Let alone... who was he babbling about?"

"Someone named Crayak. Any ideas?" I asked her, knowing she probably had as l little idea of who that was as I did. The name gave me an uneasy feeling, but I wasn't exactly sure why. It reminded me of... something, and I had the idea that it should scare me. But I couldn't figure out why I had that kind of reaction to a name I knew I'd never heard before.

Shaking her head, Rachel paused to consider. "No... I... don't think so. It's weird, it's like the name gives me this bad feeling but I can't really remember why. I have this horrible feeling that when we think of why we hate this guy, it'll make everything worse."

I nodded, feeling the same way. "I know. But right now, David's here. Where could he go?" I waited a moment, and then groaned while answering my own question. "Anywhere. He could go anywhere, and be anyone. I'm starting to realize why Visser Three hates us so much."

We talked for a few minutes, trying to figure out where to search, and what to do when and if we found him. Finally, I had an idea about the first part. "Wait, say David doesn't want to leave, just assume that much. If he wants to be here, it has to be about the banquet. He's not here to talk to the yeerks, because we'd be done in already and halfway to our own brainslugs by now. He's not here to help us. So that leaves the world leaders. He wanted to be here, for whatever reason, so he let us bring him."

Rachel caught on, and stood up. "If he's here for them, then he's probably scoping the place out too. Like a bug or even some guy that can walk around the room without being stopped."

"Like security." I nodded and then added. "But it's worse than that. If he could be security, he can go right up into the main monitor room and watch everything. He could even take in one of the yeerk's people and see everything they're doing too. He's playing his own side in this, Rachel. Whatever he's trying to do, we have to stop him. I think right now that means getting into the security room and trying to figure out which one is him."

We both agreed and then realized there was the problem of getting from where we were to the security room without being caught. We could go small, but then we wouldn't be able to get to the place before we ran out of time in morph. There also wasn't any guarantee that we'd even be able to find it without our normal senses.

In the end, we came up with a plan together. Sneaking out of the room, we made our way up to the twelfth floor and found another room to break into.

Once we were inside the new room, Rachel went to the patio door and slid it open. While she did that, I went to the minibar and found a bag of peanuts. Together, we spread the peanuts over the balcony like someone had dropped them and then scattered them into the room. After that it was a simple matter to sit back and wait for a few birds to land on the balcony and start picking at the nuts.

One of the birds made its way inside to the nuts we had scattered on the floor. Looking at its bright red head, black wings, and white body, I shook my head. "What kind of bird is that anyway?"

Rachel worked her way cautiously behind the thing. "I think it's a woodpecker. You know, like Woody." She very slowly closed the glass door so the thing couldn't get away.

"If he's a woodpecker, why isn't he pecking wood?" Not that I was complaining, I just didn't know much about them.

"I remember Cassie saying they gather seeds too. Besides..." Rachel crouched down, and the bird looked to her as if to dare her to make her move. She froze. "We did sort of offer a free meal."

"True." I took a step that way, and reached out. Instantly, the woodpecker shot into the air and nearly took my eyes out with its beak. I had to lunge back with a yell.

As I swatted at the thing when it tried to fly right through my face, Rachel leapt forward and grabbed the thing. It beat its wings and squawked, but she hung onto it. A moment later, it stopped fighting and became still. I blinked. "You're acquiring it?"

"Sure." She shrugged and then carefully turned the thing over. "Who knows when it might come in handy." She plucked a feather from the bird while it was in its trance, and then as the thing woke up and screamed at her, she let it go. Angrily, the woodpecker flapped up to the far corner and perched there, squawking furiously at us.

Rachel handed the feather to me, and I stepped over to the phone. Knocking it off the hook the way I hoped a bird could have by bumping into it, I randomly ran my hand over the buttons, making sure to hit 0 first for the hotel operator. In the office below, some clerk would be hearing random button noises as well as bird sounds. Hopefully it would be enough for them to send security to check it out.

As soon as I thought I'd done enough with the phone, I stuck the feather on the desk next to it for added evidence, then nodded to Rachel and we both started to morph. Slowly, we shed our human forms and turned into one of mother nature's most successful, and utterly disgusting projects. That's right, we were becoming cockroaches.

Morphing together while turning into the nasty little bugs was always worse than doing it alone, because when you're with someone else there's the added disgust of actually seeing what's happening to you if you look at the other person. We both turned away from each other and did the morph as quickly as we could.

Within a couple minutes, there were two little roaches scuttling around on the floor near the door. This was the dangerous part. We had to morph early enough that we'd be ready when the security guy came, but we also had to morph late enough that we weren't too tempting of a snack for the woodpecker. Hopefully he'd had his fill on the nuts and was still too startled from his brief capture to go hunting.

We could feel the vibrations as someone walked toward the room. Above us and on the other side of the room, the woodpecker squawked. In a sudden flutter of wings, the thing went from sitting above the window to flying right at us.

It landed on the floor inches from where we huddled and started to cock its head back to peck down. (Scatter!) I yelled to Rachel, and we broke apart just as the beak the floor right between us.

Cockroaches are fast, but woodpecker beaks are faster. We probably would have been caught within seconds, but the door opened and a male voice yelled. "Whoa! Shit, there really is a bird in here." Another voice from the hallway said something, but I couldn't make it out. Sometimes it's hard to understand voices when you're a bug.

(Now?) Rachel asked while the security man lunged for the bird which had abandoned us to fly away from the guy who was now lunging around trying to grab it. I heard laughter from the doorway, so his partner must have thought the whole situation was funny. That was good. We didn't want them to think of this as anything serious. We just wanted them to think that some bird had gotten in somehow and been trapped when a maid closed the patio door.

(Go for it.) I agreed and shot away from the floorboards. It was insane, as Marco would have said. We were going to hitch a ride on the security man's pants right into the office.

Together, we shot up over the man's shoe and under his pant cuff. We were careful to cling to his sock without touching his skin, so that he wouldn't notice us.

Once we were both on, it took both men a few minutes to chase the bird out to the balcony and away from the room. Then our guy started moving again. I heard the clang of him hanging up the phone, and then he apparently found the feather because he mentioned it to the other man. They laughed about the crazy bird and then started out, turning the light off on their way.

(Think they'll head straight back to the office?) Rachel asked after a moment while the men walked down the hall.

(Hopefully they'll have to go back and report about the bird.) I replied, while struggling to hold on without alerting the man. It was much harder to cling to a moving foot, even as a bug, than it was to stay on a wall. Especially since with each step the roach brain screamed at me to run away. They are terrified little bugs, which is a part of why they manage to survive everywhere. Sometimes their instincts were helpful in avoiding trouble. Other times they made it a pain to focus on more important things, like not letting the paranoid security guy know that two cockroaches were catching a ride on his feet.

We fell silent for awhile, each focused on not falling off or touching the man's skin while the two security guys walked to the elevator and then rode it down. I knew Rachel was quiet because she was worrying about her sister, as well as Cassie. I wished I knew what to say to her, but knowing what to say to people isn't one of my strong points. I can get them to do things, but understanding how they're feeling and talking them through it is much harder.

A few minutes later our ride walked into what we assumed was the security room from the sound of people typing and what had to be some kind of football game on a television in the corner. The guy we were perched on said something about birds screwing around in the room, then someone made a joke about that not being the only screwing around going on in there.

Just as I started to settle down and look for the best time to scuttle off the man's shoe, we both got a shock. (Okay, let's try again. Rachel? Marco? Jake? Anyone? Melissa? Somebody?)

(Tobias?!) Rachel demanded. (How did you get in here? Where are you?) She sounded as startled as I felt.

(I'm with Ax and Erek. Turns out the Chee can overload the field, but only very briefly. Erek says he won't be able to do it again for awhile. Erek's playing vending machine in the top left corner of the room and we've been calling out for you guys every time someone new comes in.)

(Overload the field...) Rachel repeated, sounding hopeful. (Can he get me out? I have to go. Jordan's in the hospital.) She took a moment to explain urgently.

There was silence, and then Tobias answered. (Erek says he can do it. He can get you out. But there's two things. First, he can't do it for another two hours. Second, once he does it the second time the field will adjust to his signature and he won't be able to do it again." He paused, and then clarified. "Rachel, that means if you go out of the field, you won't be able to get back in. We'll be doing the rest of this mission without you.)


	17. The Threat Chapter Four

Thanks, netrat, for letting me explain something else that might not be entirely clear. Also, thanks for giving me things to think about that can improve the story and my writing in general. Jake IS worried about Jordan. It's just that he's also got a million other things to worry about, including the survival of the human race. So, as a good leader, he's compartmentalizing things, and assigning them priority. It's like he says at a few points in the series, you're not supposed to show too many human feelings as a leader. You're supposed to look like you're better than that, so everyone you're leading can look up to you being brave and strong. So, while Jordan is his cousin and he is worried about her, he's not showing it much. And if he lets himself think about it, he'll show it, and Rachel will be even more lost.

Chapter Four

It took a good ten minutes for us to use our pathetic roach senses to find our way to where the other three were hidden behind Erek's hologram. We demorphed under cover, and found ourselves in a room about the size of the average classroom. On both sides of the room were long tables full of monitors covering every area of the grounds and pool in the area directly around the hotel and in the lobby, as well as the first couple floors. The screens kept flipping back and forth between various cameras, and the four men in the room were studying them intently while chatting over colas and a pizza that was sitting on the end of the table near us. The atmosphere was serious, but also kind of laid back, like these guys knew their job and were comfortable with it.

While Rachel spoke in a hushed almost silent tone with Erek, I looked to Tobias. He was in his normal hawk form, as odd it was for me to think of his hawk body as normal, perched on Ax's shoulder. Ever since our first mission, Tobias has been trapped in the body of a red tailed hawk. He was stuck in that one body for months before an unbelievably powerful being known as the Ellemist gave him his morphing power back. But hawk is still his default form. Anything else is just a morph, with the same two hour limit as the rest of us. If he overstays that limit, he's out of the fight.

Ax was in his human morph, since it would have been hard to comfortably hide his andalite body in the space we had. Tobias explained that when they finally met up with Erek, the Chee had said that all entrance into the yeerk pool was closed down for the time being. When he had said that he could bypass the field to get them inside with us, the two had quickly agreed. They had all come here and assumed that at least one of us at some point would enter the security room.

(So we decided to wait, and here you are.) He finished. (Is... Rachel...) He turned his intense hawk glare in her direction, not wanting to interrupt her talk with Erek over what she could do. He knew how Rachel felt about the war. He knew how impossible of a decision was being forced on her right now. She could leave to be with her sister, but it would mean abandoning us in our most dangerous mission so far.

"She'll..." I hesitated. "She'll be okay. She's Rachel." It was as simple as that. Rachel, in some ways, was the strongest of us. She was our warrior, our gladiator. I trusted her. Maybe she wouldn't make what some would call the right decision straight off, but I knew she would make whatever decision she made work in our favor.

Tobias leveled me with his stare before changing the subject. (Where's Marco?) He paused, then as though he had forgotten for a moment, added. (And Melissa? Are they checking out the banquet hall or did Marco detour into the pool?)

"Banquet hall." I confirmed almost silently, because one of the guards was looking around. Something had caught his attention. I didn't know what it was, but the man stood up and leaned over partway toward us. Then I realized that he was looking at the empty pizza box. Wait, empty? It had been half full just a moment... Oh I had a bad feeling about this.

I looked back quickly at Ax, who I just realized had been suspiciously quiet during all of this. In his human form, he's usually hard to shut up. Just as I had suspected, the reason Ax had been quiet was because his mouth was full of pizza. Putting it mildly, a lot of pizza. He must have had at least two full slices crammed halfway into his mouth, pushing at them with his fingers while he made mild pleased noises. There was tomato sauce all over his chin, and I knew that these two slices weren't the first.

"Ax!" I hissed under my breath. "What are you doing? You can't take the pi..."

I fell silent then, because the annoyed guard was standing right next to us, picking up the pizza box. "Hey!" He called out to the other three men. "Which one of you snuck over here and took the last half of my ham and olive? You know that was mine."

All four men started to argue, and I sighed, giving Ax a look. He gave me a pizza smeared contrite look before licking his fingers. "I am sorry. orry... orrrry.. ree, Prince Jake. But the smells were so... enticing. Icing? Ent Icing. I could not resist."

Rachel, who had noticed something else happening while we were distracted, stepped up between Ax and me, looking to the men. She pointed past them at the monitors. "Look." She whispered.

I looked where she pointed, and saw one of the monitors focused on what had to be the banquet hall. There was a platform at one end with a podium that had the presidential seal on it. All around the room were hanging chandeliers and beautiful pillars. There were also a lot of small tables with white tablecloths, where all the guests would enjoy their fifteen thousand dollar dinners while the world leaders gave their speeches.

And on that platform where the leaders of the free world would talk about the problems in the middle east stood the man who trumped all the problems the earth had ever known. It was Visser 3, in what we knew as his human morph. The man radiated evil even through a television monitor, and I repressed a shudder. He seemed to be talking to two of the secret service men. "Remember their faces." I hissed. "They've gotta be controllers."

"I agree, Prince Jake." Ax had finally sucked all the pizza sauce off his fingers. "But we are not the only ones interested in the Visser, it seems."

Blinking, I glanced first to Ax, then at where he was looking. One of the four security men wasn't paying attention to the argument. Instead, the man, who had somewhat unkempt red hair and a trim beard, was staring intently at the same monitor that we had been watching. I realized that the screen had stayed on that view instead of switching to the next camera because he had pressed the button to stop it there. Something was in the man's eyes, a sort of hunger that made me nervous. He was staring at the Visser like, well, like the Visser typically stared at us. Like he was prey.

"There are certain anomalies in his genetic structure that I can't fully analyze." Erek finally spoke up, in a normal tone of voice. It made the rest of us, even Tobias, jump and turn back in surprise, since we had all been whispering. "And I might remind you." Erek went on with a slight grin. "That I am containing all of the sounds within this space. No one can hear you, even if you shout. I swear, someday I'm going to have the Chee manual implanted in the back of you people's eyelids."

"Oh." I said, feeling slightly dumb. "Right, okay then. Anomalies in the genetic structure. I'm going out on a limb to say that's probably David."

(If that's David...) Tobias spread his wings and hopped over to land on Rachel's arm. (Then him being interested in the Visser definitely isn't good for us.)

Rachel reached a hand up gently to stroke his left wing, and Tobias started to preen absently. She looked torn, but like she had made a decision. "Jake..." She said slowly. "I have to go to Jordan. I can't not be there. I can miss a lot of things... but not this. I'll try to help... I'll do anything I can, even try to find a way in again if everything goes okay. But I just... I can't stay here while Jordan's..." She choked herself off, refusing to go on.

I paused before responding. To be honest, the decision surprised me a bit, and that worried me. Why should Rachel deciding to stay with her little sister in the hospital instead of risking her life here and possibly never seeing Jordan again surprise me? What did that say about what I thought of her? With a troubled look that she probably misinterpreted, I nodded. "Okay. Erek, get Rachel out as soon as you can. We'll take care of this. Ax, Tobias, we need to get do a flies so we can follow David when he leaves the room." I added the last since the red headed security guy was already starting to lace up his shoes tighter, like he was getting ready to head out.

"And Erek, please get the other Chee to cover for us. I forgot... to call when we found out about Jordan before." I waited until Erek agreed, and then put a hand on Rachel's arm. "Rachel... I'm glad you're going to see Jordan. We can handle this. Just... we wouldn't object to your help later if it turns out we, you know, can't." I tried for a smile, and it came out a little weak.

Rachel snorted softly and punched me in the shoulder. "Be good, Jake. Take the creep down, but save something for me to do." She embraced me quickly, like she was half embarrassed about it, and then stepped back. I saw her open her mouth like she was going to change her mind and come with us, but she closed it again reluctantly without saying anything.

Ax started to demorph back to his Andalite body, since we couldn't go straight from one morph to another like David apparently could. We all shuffled a little to the side to give him room, but we were still bunched up together. To relieve some of that, I started to go directly into fly morph. I saw Rachel whispering to Tobias, and she hugged him awkwardly, since it's rather hard to embrace a hawk. Then he started to shrink as well. Rachel watched us for a moment before looking a little sick as she turned away. I wasn't sure how much of her expression was from the sight of my head suddenly erupting into a mess of compound eyes while Tobias's feathers grew all black and sticky as they melted down, and how much was from her not wanting to leave the fight.

It took us a couple of extremely disgusting minutes for all of us to reach full fly morph. By then, the red headed guard we figured was David was on his way out the door. In the end, Tobias and I flew out to keep track of him while telling Ax to catch up when he finished morphing. As we took off, Rachel called. "Good luck!"

Once Ax caught up with us, we all flew crazily down the hall to catch up with David, who was disappearing around the corner. We stayed near the ceiling and prayed that we'd be able to stick with him. He was almost at the end of the next hall by the time we turned the bend, and we hauled fly butt after him and prayed that he wouldn't go too far.

Thankfully, sort of, he had stopped just at the end of the hall, giving us time to catch up. That was the good news. The bad news was that he was talking to Visser Three. They were chatting almost... amicably. It was both strange and disconcerting. It sounded like they were old friends, but both of them were being cagey enough that the old friend routine came off like two political opponents forced to meet and act like they didn't hate each others guts.

We flew a bit lower to hear better, and I noticed something on the back of the Visser's coat. Dipping closer, I saw that there were two other flies clinging to the space between the back of his neck and his shoulders, on the collar. (Marco, Melissa? That's you guys, right?)

(Nope. Two completely different flies.) Marco answered, and I saw one of the flies shift.

(That know thought speak?) I countered quickly, landing between the both of them. Ax and Tobias followed suit.

Marco was silent, like he was trying to think quickly. (I... crap. Fine, it's us.)

(You should have gone for the Great and Powerful Oz routine.) Tobias observed. (And pretended to be the Visser's hairpiece.)

Ax wondered. (What is a hairpiece? Is it a weapon?)

(Not even close, Ax-Man.) Marco responded. (And hey, what are you guys doing here anyway?) We explained, while listening to the security man that David had taken over and the Visser exchange a few last words. Then Marco reported. (Well, we heard a whole lot of nothing. We couldn't get close enough while the Visser was talking to his boys in the banquet room.)

Melissa added quietly. (They were slapping anything that looked like it could be a bug. They're kind of...)

(Paranoid.) Marco supplied. (Kind of very paranoid. Kind of please god don't let us be seen here on the Visser's jacket, because I promised my dad I wouldn't get squashed and left as smeared fly guts all over the wall until I'm at least twenty one.)

(Wait, now where's he going?) Melissa asked suddenly, as the Visser started to walk again. We entered a brightly lit room, and heard a fan. Melissa answered her own question. (The bathroom? We're in the boys room?) She sounded, amusingly, like that was the scariest thing to happen today. (I can't be in the boys room. I don't want to be in the boy's room either. This sucks.)

(The Visser has to potty?) Marco demanded. (Okay, Jake, I'll do a lot of things, but I am so out of here for that.) He started to fly up off the visser's coat, and the rest of us followed quickly. We had no desire to stick around for it either.

(What is this potty?) Ax sounded confused. (Is the Visser taking this hairpiece into the potty? I don't understand.)

(I hate to interrupt Ax's continuing education in the ways of wigs and toilets...) Tobias interrupted before any of us could explain. (But I don't think David was done with the conversation.) Sure enough, David had stealthily entered the room behind the Visser, who was no doubt accustomed to using his Andalite stalk eyes most of the time, and wasn't used to turning around to look behind himself.

(Oh my bad feeling just exploded.) I said slowly, starting to realize what was going on. (David isn't here for us or the world leaders. We were wrong.) I said, feeling stunned as it hit me. (I was wrong. David's here for Visser Three. If he absorbs him, suddenly he's in charge of the yeerk invasion. That's what he was talking about earlier. He's going to do it right. He'll take over. He'll be the new Visser Three. No one'll know the difference. Except he'll win.)

(Wait... are you telling us...) Marco started.

(Yep.) I confirmed, feeling helpless. We were all flies. What the hell could we do? (If we want to save the earth, we've gotta save Visser Three.)


	18. The Threat Chapter Five

Hey guys, thanks for waiting for this chapter. I hope you enjoy it. And I think it's awesome that you like the way I'm portraying Rachel, S.Belle. She's one of my favorite characters too. (Her and Tobias) And hearing that you think I'm doing her justice is really great to hear.

Anyway, I promise there won't be such a delay between this chapter and the next one. For now, here you go.

Chapter Five

(Oh that's easy.) Marco said conversationally. (I'll just whip out my ten inch claws and leap right into battle.) He stopped as though just realizing something. (Oh wait, silly me, I'm a friggin fly!)

(We're all friggin flies.) Tobias complained, while David approached the Visser. (What are we supposed to do, annoy him into submission? Ask him to wait until we're ready?)

(Nope.) I replied while already regretting my next decision. (Annoy Visser Three. If he sees us, he'll think we're the Andalites.) Even as I spoke, I flipped around in midair and dove for the side of his face to set the example. I powered my wings and shot right around, landing on the human cheek briefly before taking off again and flying right around nearly into his eye. The Visser yelled in surprise and slapped at his cheek. I barely managed to zip up and out of the way.

Marco was right behind me. (Annoy the Visser into attacking us? I don't like this plan. This is a horrible plan. I officially dub it 'Plan Suck'.) Even as he spoke however, he was buzzing around the Visser's left eye, narrowly evading his grasping fingers.

Ax and Tobias joined us with Melissa following them a second later while asking. (D-do you guys ever come up with plans that aren't really elaborate suicide attempts?)

(Not really.) Marco replied while the five of us buzzed right across the Visser's face like a squadron of jet fighters. (Jake is like the Rube Goldberg of suicide. One of these days he'll get it right.)

(Shut up and scatter!) I ordered, as the Visser whipped around with a shout while flailing his hands at all of us.

He yelled. "Meddling ANDA--" Then cut himself short when he spotted the other man. While he was distracted, we shot to every side as high as we could go. Visser Three stared at the security man that David had become. He was obviously surprised by the man's presence, and panted while darting his eyes around looking for us.

David, who was obviously caught off guard by the Visser's sudden alertness, stopped short. Visser Three glowered at him as though it could have been his fault. "What are you doing in here? What do you want?" He was twitching still, obviously trying to avoid yelling about the Andalite Bandits, which told me that whoever David had taken over, he wasn't a controller. If he was, Visser Three would have been ordering him to kill us immediately.

"I..." David started while shooting an intense glare up at where I sat in the high left corner near the ceiling. His eyes burned with hatred close to what the Visser was shooting our way. Then he shook his head and forced a smile. It wasn't very convincing, but then again, I doubt Visser Three was knowledgeable enough about human expressions to realize that. "I just had to clean my hands." He stepped past the other man, and it seemed like an invisible wall kept the two from getting too close. It was as though the darkness in both of them was so strong that they were incapable of occupying space too near each other. Or I'm exaggerating and Visser Three was just naturally suspicious of the man David had become.

The Visser looked around the room once more and muttered about insecticide, then walked briskly from the room. As the door opened, all of us shot after him into the large hallway. I don't think any of us wanted to be left alone with David in fly morph. Not that it seemed we could do much better in full battle form, but still. Besides, as close as that had been, at least Visser Three would be too suspicious for David to sneak up on him for awhile.

(Well that was a lot of not fun.) Tobias said tensely while we all hit the ceiling and struggled to watch the dim and contorted vision of the Visser striding away. (Could we go do something less dangerous now, like punching a Carcharodontosaurus?)

(Wait, punching a what?) Marco demanded. (A Car car oh darn uh saurus? You just made that up.)

Tobias sounded offended. (I did not. And it's Carcharodontosaurus. They were an allosaurid theropod from mid-Cretacious..." He went on for a minute, and I tuned him out while trying to think about what to do next. We couldn't just follow the Visser around all day trying to keep David away from him.

(Prince Jake, what are Marco and Tobias talking about?) Ax asked me while they argued.

(Like I ever know.) I replied while pushing off to fly down the hall. (Come on, we need to change somewhere and figure out what we're going to do next if David is after Visser Three.)

(I've got an idea.) Marco said once he and the others started to follow. We flew, searching for a place that was private enough to demorph. The hard part was that fly eyes aren't all that good and we had no real way of knowing which way we were going. Anything further than a few inches out was just a glob of color. We would have gone back to our room, but there was no way we could find it in this state.

I thought carefully while responding. (We're not going to order pay per view boxing and raid the minibar.)

(Then I have no plan.) Marco sulked for a moment, then spoke up again. (Unless...) He sounded hesitant, like he was sorry he was even suggesting anything. That was usually the way Marco was just before he had an actual good plan. Mostly because his good plans tended to be the most traumatizing ones.

I hesitated, but the truth was I wasn't coming up with anything spectacular. (What is it, Marco? Spit it out.)

(Well...) He started relunctantly. (Whoever the Visser's human morph is to the people around here, it's someone important. If we could find one of the people that he's supposed to interact with a lot, we could snatch them and hold them quietly while one of us assumes his role to stay near Visser Three.)

I almost regretted asking. (And you people call my plans suicidal.) I complained before sighing. (But it's probably our best shot. Let's demorph and then figure out who gets guard duty. Then we can try to find a likely candidate.)

It took about forty minutes for us to locate a dark corner, demorph, find our bearings in relation to the stairs, then remorph and get all the way back to a safe room on one of the higher levels. By the time we managed it, all of us were exhausted from all the morphing. If you do it too much, it's like running a marathon, and we had been morphing a lot today.

Melissa fell back on the bed, breathing heavily. "I didn't know... it was this... tiring." She lifted her head with a yawn. "Are we really gonna kidnap someone?" She sounded a little worried about that idea. "I mean... saving the world... but... what about the person we take? Won't they... notice we're just kids?"

(She has a point.) Tobias spoke from his perch on the dresser where he was cleaning his feathers with his beak. (How are we supposed to hold a guy for... however long, without him figuring out what we are?)

"I don't know." I admitted and sighed. "We could keep him tied up... and... not talk around him. Lower our voices or something."

"But... we're.. talking about kidnapping." Melissa's objection was soft, like she wasn't sure if she really should be saying anything. "Can we do that?"

"We can do what we have to do to save the world." Marco snapped a little in her direction. "I'm not saying we make a habit of it, but if it helps us stop David from becoming the new leader of the Yeerk Invasion, then I say we do whatever it takes."

Melissa opened her mouth again, then fell silent before answering hesitantly. "I... guess so... but how exactly do--"

"We just live with it." Marco went on, turning to her. "We do what we have to do. Sometimes it's bad and sometimes it's terrifying and sometimes it's evil, but we do it, okay? And yeah, it's morphing a sentient being. We don't like doing that either, but this is a special situation, especially considering the person who usually tells us not to do that is one of the people we're trying to save here!"

Staring back at him, Melissa paused before responding carefully. "I... was going to ask how we kidnap a grown man without being seen."

Marco blinked and then looked away. "Right.. um, yeah. I guess they might notice the gorilla and tiger tag team abduction, huh?"

Ax, in his Andalite body since we had pulled the blinds tightly closed to hide our presence anyway, asked. (The people who are responsible for the event will sleep here, yes?)

I looked away from Marco and Melissa to nod at him. "Yeah, they've taken over the first two floors to put up all the people they've got here. I guess they figure that's easier than having them drive from home every morning, especially when they need things on the spur of the moment."

Ax twisted one of his stalk eyes to look at the window while the other watched Tobias on the desk. (Then, why do we not just wait for them to be sleeping and abduct our chosen target while he or she sleeps?)

"Good point, Ax." I said and then looked to the others. "Okay, we'll wait until tonight. We need some sleep anyway. But first, we need to figure out which one of us is going to be the Visser's bodyguard."

"See, now that doesn't even sound right." Marco complained with a sigh. "We have to be the Visser's bodyguard? We're babysitting Visser Three? Can I submit a complaint? Our job sucks. Can't we, just for once, tell the world to save itself?"

"Sorry, Marco." I replied while picking up a few of the coffee stirrers from next to the coffee maker that had been provided for the room. I bent one of the stirrers in half and snapped it, then dropped one half while holding the other tightly in my fist with the other four. "Short straw takes up guard duty."

I held my fist out, and Marco stepped over first. He looked straight at me while putting his hand over mine, then slowly selected one of the stirrers. It was a long one. I nodded and he stepped away, tossing it into the trash. "Not my go, I guess."

Then Melissa stepped over and hesitated before pulling one of the stirrers up. I think we all breathed a sigh of relief when it was a long one. As good as she had been with all of this so far, none of us, not even Melissa, wanted to test her with something like this so quickly.

Ax was next, and he also drew a long straw. (I do not understand this ritual.) He said with some confusion. (How is it determined that the person who draws the shorter straw is the better candidate for the job?)

(Fate, Ax-Man.) Tobias spoke up while taking a quick hop over to land on my arm. (We leave it all up to fate.) He nudged one of the two remaining stirrers with his beak, and I pulled it up with my other hand to reveal the short stirrer, slowly giving it to him. He paused, then returned to his spot with the stirrer in his beak before dropping it next to him on the desk. (There you go, fate. I'm your bird.)

I shook my head, surprised. Somehow I hadn't really thought about Tobias being the one to do the bodyguard work, but it made sense. At the very least if he had to demorph from the form we got for him, he'd still be somewhat useful, and unidentifiable. "Right... I guess... that makes sense."

Marco yawned and strolled to the second bed to flop down on it before picking up the remote. "Now that's settled, I'm gonna veg out with some Spongebob and catch a few thousand z's before we try to murder ourselves horribly again."

I frowned at the television, then sighed in defeat. "All right, fine, just keep the volume low. We don't need to attract attention." I looked to the door and swallowed. This whole thing made me uneasy. "We've got a long night tonight, so get some sleep. I have the feeling we're gonna need it. I'll stand guard first."

"What we need is a few bazookas and a squad of panzers." Marco retorted while flipping channels. "But I'll settle for sleep."

I let them talk and stepped away to think to myself. Folding my arms, I tuned everyone out, thinking about the mission. Always the mission. I couldn't even take the time to worry about Jordan, because if I did, someone would notice and lose their own confidence. I was the leader. I had to be stronger than anyone should have to be. But I was so tired. So tired, and no amount of sleep was going to cure that. I wondered if anything, even the end of this war, ever would.

I had been changed, forever. And it scared me. In that moment, I desperately wished that I could be at the hospital, worrying about Jordan and comforting Rachel. I wanted to be who I'd been a year ago.

But that wasn't me anymore, and a wise man once said you can never go back to how you were before. You can only be what you've become. The trouble was, as I stood apart from the others and trembled, I wasn't sure what that was.


	19. The Threat Chapter Six

Hey everyone. :) I thought I'd answer Netrats questions, hopefully. First, you are undoubtedly right about Tobias. He's a sneaky bird. Two is answered fairly quickly in this chapter, but to summarize, Jake meant to watch over the Visser in the last chapter when he said that thing about standing guard. He was just being slow and contemplative instead of moving his butt on it. As for three, well, they're animorphs. Half the answer is that they're insane and the other half is that they're incredibly good at stealth infiltration. So we'll see how it goes for them. Unless of course I interrupt their plan with an nasty cliffhanger at the end of the chapter. But would I do that?

Chapter Six

Finally, I decided that I'd felt sorry for myself long enough. Carefully, I stepped to the door and eased it open. All I really wanted to do was fall down and sleep for a good week, but there wasn't any time for that.

Marco noticed what I was doing and spoke up from the bed. "Hey, what are you doing?" He tossed the remote to Ax, who immediately began chasing commercials to find his favorite ones. No one really complained. I think Melissa was already asleep and Tobias was busy staring out the window at the sky. The sun was still high, and I guessed that it was sometime in the mid afternoon. A glance to the clock told me I was

"I told you." I turned back to him with my hand on the knob. "I'll stand guard. Someone's got to watch over the Visser in case David tries something else today."

"Jake, dude, you're dead on your feet." Marco shook his head and swung his legs to the floor before standing to cross the room. As he moved, Tobias turned his attention back to us, his laser like hawk stare drilling through me as though he knew what I wanted to do.

"So I won't use my feet." I tried a weak joke, hoping Marco would appreciate it. "I'll have wings." When Marco didn't smile, I sighed. "Look, someone's gotta do it. Yeah, I'm tired, but we can't just expect David to take a break for us. He could still go after Visser Three." I didn't mention that I was hoping he'd try it so I could have a rematch with David. Somehow it didn't seem like Marco would really trust that I was thinking straight if I said something like that.

(I doubt it.) Tobias finally interrupted, then turned back to the patio door. (He just left in a limo with a convoy of jeep escorts. My guess is he's heading for his private Kandrona on the mothership so that he's ready for Monday.)

"He could come back." Now I was frustrated, and grasping at straws. "He could take in the rays and come right back."

"Yeah." Marco said dryly. "Because the Visser's always been in such a rush to deny his own comfort.Face it, Jake, we've got the afternoon off. Everything we've seen says that the yeerks have to splash around in their little pool for hours. I bet our little run in with him as the flies convinced the little slug that we're trapped here so he can spend all the time he needs tomorrow hunting us down. But right now we get to sleep. Don't worry, all the screaming and terror and nightmares can come back tomorrow when we deal with David. Together." He enunciated the last word carefully, and the look he passed to Tobias let me know that they both realized I'd wanted a face to face meeting with David without anyone else around.

With a sigh of annoyance, I picked up one of the pillows from the bed and squeezed it hard before letting out my breath. "Fine, okay, I guess we all do need to sleep." I tossed the pillow to the floor and dragged one of the blankets off the bed. While I did that, Marco stepped past me to quietly but firmly close the door, as though sealing me inside. We each gave each other a long look, then I laid down and thought of Cassie. My fist clenched.

I thought it would be impossible to sleep, but I was wrong. Morphing and fighting had taken more out of me than I thought, because the next thing I knew after I pulled the blanket over me, there was a breeze drifting in from the open window. Wait a minute, open window? As soon as that thought hit me, I sat up quickly. My mouth tasted like cotton, but I managed to cough and speak. "What?"

Marco stood by the patio door, looking out at the dark sky. "Don't worry, Tobias and Ax just took off to get some food. Tobias thinks he can catch a squirrel on the golf course since it's lit up in places and he's going to play look out so Ax can run back there. Or at least, you know, jog back and forth." Andalites eat by absorbing trampled grass through their hooves, which is also how they drink. I guess when you don't have a mouth, you've got to take in your nutrients somehow. Marco unwrapped a granola bar he'd taken from the snacks provided for paying guests and tossed it to me.

I nodded after catching the bar, then stood up and took a bite. "Where's Melissa then?" The bed where she had slept was empty. "Ow, and you get the floor next time, dude." I rubbed a harsh cramp in my back and yawned.

"She's in the shower. She said something about dealing with dirty clothes but that she'd be voluntarily crucified before she went a day without a shower." Marco shrugged. "Girls are weird, man." Now that he said it, I recognized the sound of the water running.

"Yeah, weird." I replied absently while walking to the sink to use one of those plastic wrapped cups so I could rinse out my mouth and drink some water. Feeling better after a minute of that, I walked over next to Marco. Together, we stood looking out at the dark grounds. Far below us I could see the ocassional flashlight beam from patrolling guards. Thankfully the lights were off in the room and the television had long since been shut down, so there was nothing to alert them to someone being up here, even if they walked out far enough to see this floor.

"So I guess we need a target." Marco said finally, after a minute of silence where the only sound was the shower in the other room. "Someone close enough to the Visser to keep an eye on him but far enough away that he won't notice if the guy's acting off."

I nodded slowly, then paused before responding. "Yeah... I had an idea for that but... are we really doing this? Are we taking a guy... kidnapping him, and then taking his.. dna?" Something about it seemed horribly wrong, and I knew part of that was that I knew Cassie would have never stood for it.

"Like I said last night, I don't see a choice." Marco shrugged. "Yeah, it sucks, but this is five world leaders. It's the whole invasion, against one guy being a little inconvenienced? Not even close, Jake. We do it or we fail. How'd you like to explain that to all the new yeerk slaves? Yeah, sorry we couldn't save you, but we were squeamish about interfering with one guy's life."

"When you put it that way..." I sighed and we both looked over as Melissa emerged from the bathroom. She had her morphing outfit on again, but she'd cleaned up. It actually seemed like a good idea, since we had the time. "My turn." I said and stepped past her before Marco could say anything.

I showered for about twenty minutes and when I got out, I felt a lot more human. As I came back out into the room, I could see that Ax and Tobias had returned. Everyone looked at me and Marco spoke up from his spot near the window. "So, bossman. You said something about having an idea about this guy we need to borrow."

"Yeah, I... do." I said after a moment. "I was thinking, with all the cops and secret service guys running around, the ordinary hotel security guys are pretty far down in importance. We'd probably get screwed if we tried to grab one of the big guys, but hotel security? I think we can take one of those guys. Besides, they're not expected to do that much now with all the big leaguers around, besides be visible. If we get one of those guys, we could probably stick around any room the Visser walks through." I tried to say it matter of factly, sort of glazing over the part where we'd have to kidnap a trained security officer.

(Sounds like the best plan we'll get.) Tobias offered after everyone looked back and forth at each other. I had the feeling they'd been talking about what to do if my plan was something like calling David out with a megaphone to rumble. (I don't have much better vision at night than you guys, but if you want to hop on Red-tail airlines, we could go window shopping for the right guy. I think I can figure out where the employee cottages are."

Melissa glanced to Marco like she was hesitant to question anything, then sighed softly and asked. "How do we keep him quiet for however long we need?"

Ax, who had been quiet up to this point, finally spoke up. (If I can acquire the man while he sleeps, I can blend his dna with the other human dna that I've acquired from you, Marco, Cassie, and Rachel, and create another morph using the Frolis Maneuver. This morph would be similar to the man in size and build, but would look different. He would see another human keeping him prisoner, a human he would never be able to identify.)

We explained to Melissa how Ax had taken our dna and combined them to make his human morph, and she asked. "Wait... does that mean you could... like... take the dna of a wolf and mix it with a bird to make a wolf with a wings?"

Ax swiveled his stalk eyes to her. (No, becuse the Frolis Maneuver only works with different beings of the same species. Marco could acquire another, slightly different looking gorilla and combine them, but he could not acquire a fish and give his gorilla gills. It simply does not work that way.)

Marco sighed, mock pitifully. "Man, and here I thought I could be Scuba Kong." He managed the morose look for a moment before coughing. "Right, so Ax plays jailer. Huh, Ax locked in a room with a guy for hours, stuck in human morph. Are we sure that's not against the Geneva convention or something? I mean, we can barely stand to be around Ax in human morph for thirty minutes."

"Be nice, Marco." Still, I looked at Ax. "You have to act normal. I mean normal for one of us. You can't sit there and... play with sounds or... eat the cigarette butts."

(There will be cigarette butts?) Ax's stalk eye swiveled around to stare at me. He looked a little too eager. (They are very tasty. I do not understand why humans only light them on fire and then throw them away. Will there be chocolate? And the crispy delicious wedges with the artificial orange powder? They are almost as tasty as cigarette butts.)

While Melissa gagged, Marco rolled his eyes. "Doritos, Ax. We told you that before. And stay away from the cigarette butts. They're bad for you. Especially bad when you eat them. Just stay cool and watch the guy. We need this to go smoothly. You can't get caught up in snacking and let the guy get away."

Ax sobered at that. His eyes narrowed and his tail curved up. (I will not fail. I will maintain control of the human morph.)

"Just the same..." I said slowly. "I think we'll leave Marco with you. He can eat all the snacks before you get to them. Just don't say anything around him in your normal voice, Marco. The last thing we want is for him to realize that at least one of his kidnappers is a kid. Be mature. Melissa and I will try to figure out how the yeerks plan to infest the leaders, while we take another look at that ballroom."

(Jake, you're leaving Ax in human morph and Marco as Marco and telling them to be mature.) Tobias commented wryly.

"Yeah... well... I can dream." I muttered and then clapped once. "All right, let's move it, people. Everyone but Tobias morph to fly and then we hitch a ride on the bird." I waited a moment before matching action to words. I closed my eyes, because frankly, a roomful of people morphing into flies is really far down on my list of things I ever want to see again.

It didn't take long before we were four flies perched on the bird's back, nestled into the feathers as tight as we could get. (Everyone got their seatbelts fastened and their trays in the upright and locked position?) Tobias asked before taking off. My fly vision was so poor that I didn't exactly so much see us leave as feel the sudden tornado of wind that kicked up as we moved. It was all I could do to my little spot. Have you ever tried to cling to a fast moving bird as a fly? Trust me, it's more difficult than it sounds. Actual clinging was impossible. Mostly it amounted to hunkering as low as possible and letting ourselves be thrown against the wall of a feather.

After what felt like hours of nearly falling off, Tobias finally settled on a balcony. (Hold up, I see a good candidate, but the place next door is lit up and there's a woman by the window. Wait until she moves.)

(Okay guys.) I started to say. (Once we get inside, we have to do this quick. Marco, you keep him quiet while Ax, Tobias and I tie him up. We'll try to do it without waking the guy up but--) I was interrupted as Tobias cursed suddenly and explosively. (Tobias?! What is it, were you seen? What happened?)

(I don't...) Tobias sounded uncomfortable. (I don't know... that can't be... that isn't...)

I could hear the lie in his thought speak, but what I couldn't figure out what he'd lie about right now. (Tobias...) I started with my best warning voice. (If something's wrong, you've gotta tell us. We can't go into this blind.)

He was silent for a few seconds, then he spoke up sounding dazed. (I'm not... positive... but I could have sworn... my eyes are... worse at night but... the light and the...)

(Dude!) Marco said irritably. (Would you just spit it out already? What did you see?)

(I...) Tobias started hesitantly. (saw... see... I see Cassie.)

That got my attention. (What?! You see Cassie? Where? Did David change into her again?) I was almost ready to fly up to that window myself, bracing to take off.

(No, I see David too. He's with Cassie. He's... with... Cassie.) Tobias's voice was slow, and not nearly as ecstatic as I was feeilng right then.

(With her?) I could have died right then I was so happy. (So he's seperated from her. Come on, she needs our help then, he's holding her prisoner. He let her out, she's not dead. Come on! Point us the right way. This is great!)

Tobias sounded pained. (Jake, wait. Yeah he's holding her prisoner, I see a gun but there's something--"

I was starting to get pissed off. (What, Tobias?! What has got you so screwed up? It's Cassie, right? We save Cassie. Now come on! If you don't fly us up there I'll find it on my own, I swear to god!)

(Jake she's changed! I'm not sure... I'm positive it's her but...)

(But what?) Marco took over for me as I sputtered. (What do you mean changed?)

Tobias seemed to take a breath before speaking again. (She's... grown up, Jake... she's... an adult. Cassie's grown up.)


	20. The Threat Chapter Seven

Hey guys, I'm sorry about being so late, so... incredibly late with this chapter. My computer broke down, and is actually still broke at the moment, I'm borrowing this one. I find it hard to write when I'm borrowing time at places like the library or internet cafes, but my roommate has his own computer now, that I am able to use when he isn't. I should be back in business now that I have a somewhat reliable computer to use until I get my own back. Again, sorry for the horrible, evil delay and I'll try to be more punctual again about updates. I promise I won't leave you hanging forever on an unfinished story.

Please enjoy the new chapter, with more answers as well as more questions.

Chapter Seven

For several long seconds after Tobias spoke, my brain shut down. There was literally no coherent thought going on in my head. Cassie… grown up? What in the world did that even mean?

Marco found his voice first. (What do you mean, 'grown up'?) He demanded with a confused tone underlying his thought-speak voice. (You're screwing with us, right? This is just you and your hawk eyes picking on the little blind roaches.)

(No.) Tobias shot back, his voice terse. (I'm telling you. I'm looking right at Cassie and she's gotta be… nineteen, at least.)

(Are you sure it's her?) I knew he was sure. It was Tobias. For a moment it was just impossible to accept, or even understand what he was saying.

(I'm sure.) I felt Tobias take off from the perch where he had landed. (I'm getting a closer look. This is insane.) He added, as though it needed to be said. The four of us were stuck pressing ourselves against his feathers while he shot into the air. (There's just the two of them. The window is open a crack. I'm gonna let you guys off. Fly to the light, you should be able to see at least that much.)

Realizing that Tobias was dealing with this confusion better than I was, I did my best to sound in control. (Right, good. We'll go in and find a spot to demorph… but… no, we can't abandon the plan. Tobias… you and…) I thought quickly. Who would be best suited to helping me with David and Cassie and who would be best for kidnapping our security man? Finally, I decided. (Marco, ditch with me, we'll find out what's going on. Tobias, take Ax and Melissa and get our security man. Be careful.)

Tobias sounded more than a little doubtful. (If you're sure… From what you said David did before.)

(We're ready for it this time.) I tried to sound confident. (Besides, we don't have a choice. We still need that security guard and Tobias drew the lucky straw on that. Marco and I will get Cassie from David. But in case he gets away, we still need the rest of the plan. That means we need the security guard. Let's go, Marco.)

The two of us lifted off from Tobias and flew straight at the bright light that filled our fly vision. As we left, I heard Melissa say. (Good luck, Jake… Marco.) Ax and Tobias both echoed her sentiments, and then flew off, to their own mission.

(Ready for this, Marco?) I asked as the air current changed enough for me to be certain we were inside.

(If I said no, would it make any difference whatsoever?) Marco questioned almost idly.

(Not really.) I focused on trying to hear what was happening in the room.

(What if I told you confronting David is utterly insane and we'll die peeing our pants and screaming in terror? Anything?)

(Nope.)

(Then of course I'm ready. Duh.) Marco followed me in. As much as he complained, I always knew I could count on him to have my back.

I led him past the windowsill, into the room where we could now hear the two rumbling voices. It was difficult to make out what was being said from a distance, but I was afraid if we got any closer David would see us. (Let's go. Hug the wall until you find another opening. That should be a door. We'll go to another room, change and find out what the hell is going on.)

(Right behind you, General Bossman.) Marco replied, as the two of us buzzed along the wall until we found an opening.

Once we were in the new room, it only took a minute to demorph. Once we did, we found ourselves in a small bathroom. There was still steam on the mirror from someone's hot shower. I turned to the open doorway as we both crouched in the relative darkness. In the outer room, we could hear David's voice, as well as another one. It was easy to recognize it as Cassie's if she was a few years older.

First David spoke. "How could you be here? You can't be here. He sent me. He gave me a chance. He let me back! Me!" He sounded just a little frantic.

I tensed as I heard Cassie. "Crayak didn't send me, David." Her voice was soothing, the same voice I'd heard her use to convince an angry wolf to let her shove pills down its throat. "You know he's not the only one capable of that."

Marco shot me a confused look, and I just shrugged back at him. I didn't have a clue what they were talking about either. We both leaned closer to the door to listen more intently. I thought about barging out there, but something told me we should wait and find out as much as we could. This whole situation had spun completely out of control. It would be nice to have some kind of grasp of what was happening.

"Well he ought to mind his own business." David's voice was petulant, and I wondered what 'he' the boy was talking about. "You saw what happened the last time Jake got to be in charge. All those people died. All those crippled kids. And her." His voice was hard. "It's my turn. I can do it better."

"David." Cassie's voice was closer now, like she was moving to the door. "You need to let me help you. What Crayak is doing… he's using you. He's using your frustration. He's using your fear."

"I'm not afraid!" David bellowed then, and I jumped, because it sounded like he was just on the opposite side of the doorway from where Cassie was. I hadn't realized he was coming so close.

Cassie was still as calm as ever. "Yes, you are, David. I can help you, if you let me. You didn't mean for it to go this far, did you? He gave you the chance to morph again, to be human again, and you took it. You didn't understand the price. You didn't realize that you were bait."

David's voice was dangerously close now. He was so near the door that I was pretty sure I could stick my hand around the corner and touch his nose. "I am not bait! I'm Crayak's trusted servant! I take over the invasion, and he leaves earth to me. I can do it better than Jake. I can do it better than any of you!"

"You know Crayak doesn't trust anyone." I could almost see Cassie on the other side of the open doorframe. "And no one can trust Crayak." Her hand came up into view, like she was gesturing soothingly to the boy. I stared, enraptured by her strangely adult hand. "David… what did you do to yourself? You came back here. You found yourself… scared… terrified by the monsters he saw. You saw yourself run away from that parking lot, and you knew there couldn't be two of you."

If I'd expected answers, I was becoming very disappointed. All I was getting was a lot more questions. Two of him? What the heck was either of them talking about? I shifted uncomfortably, both because of my confusion and because my legs were cramping up. I shot a look to Marco and he returned a blank stare. I mouthed 'Morph' to him, then closed my eyes and began to focus on the tiger inside of me. I wanted firepower. We needed to hit David fast and hard, before he could react. Beside me, Marco shuffled back quietly to have room.

David's voice came back, angry and defensive. "I did what I had to do! I just took my life back." His tone turned mocking, but it had an almost desperate edge to it, like he needed to feel superior, or he'd completely lose it. "I did the same thing I did to you. You're a part of me now, the younger you. I know how you think. I know how you feel. I know what you're doing. You're distracting me, trying to make me doubt myself. It won't work!"

Orange fur, marked by black stripes, sprang up over my body as I continued the morph while Cassie responded, her voice sad. "You're right, David. I'm trying to make you doubt yourself. I'm trying to make you think for yourself, instead of blindly following what Crayak tells you. You don't believe that he'll help you, David. You know what this really is. You know why he sent you here. You can't do this. You don't want to do this."

"I'm The One!" David shot back. "I'm Crayak's soldier. I'm his lieutenant! I'm the One!" He repeated, like he needed to hear it.

"The one what?" Cassie's voice was gentle. "David, that's a name you chose for yourself. It doesn't mean anything. Crayak doesn't care what you call yourself. What you are, is the one Animorph who betrayed us, betrayed the world. And you chose that name to remind yourself of that, to tell everyone you remember what you did, who you are. You were the one, all right, the one who felt so ashamed that he threw in with Crayak because he thought he was a monster. But you're not a monster, David. You're scared. You're riding an avalanche and you just keep doing worse things, because you're lost, and confused."

"You all abandoned me! You left me on that island as a rat! You stupid hypocrites, you think you're perfect? I begged you to let me go, or to kill me. You wouldn't do it! You trapped me and left me! Your plan! It was your plan! It's your fault!" His hand shot out and grabbed her wrist, and I felt a rush of anger fill me. I didn't know what was going on, but he was not going to absorb her again. I wouldn't let it happen.

Before I knew what I was doing, before I was even sure if the morph was complete, I let out an earth shaking roar and hurled myself forward. I heard Marco frantically call out for me to wait, but I was done waiting. I was done thinking. I was done being confused. I was through listening to the little slimeball who thought he was so picked on that he had the right to try to kill us, who wanted to enslave humanity because he was hurt. I didn't know who he was, or why he knew us, or what we had done to him, but I did know one thing. David was a pain in the ass, and I wanted a piece of him.

I wanted a piece, and I got it. As I tore through the doorway too small to fit through normally, I nearly got stuck partway before simply powering my way onward and knocking chunks of wood aside in my furious lunge. Before David or Cassie could react, my teeth settled around David's wrist and I bit down with my powerful jaws. It was absolutely nothing to tear through his bones, like a human chomping vigorously into a sandwich.

My leap carried me straight through into the middle of the room, and as I landed, my mouth opened and I dropped David's hand to the floor. My muzzle dripped with his blood as David screamed in sudden frantic agony, and I let his cries fill me. I had hurt him. He could be hurt. He could be stopped. (Don't…) I began, taking a step back that way, tasting his blood, feeling the surge of predator delight from the tiger. (… you….) I took another quick lunge before David could recover, lashing out with my frying pan sized paw faster than a human eye could follow. (… ever…) My claws cut into David, raking him from chest to gut, opening up a line of gashes while he was thrown into the wall. I felt his ribs break under the force of my slap. (… touch…) I leapt once more, landing on the boy, pinning him to the ground. (… Cassie!) My own voice was joined by the tiger's roar, inches from David's face as his own blood dripped from my teeth onto his neck.

I leaned close, smelling his sudden fear, and repeated myself. (You don't ever touch Cassie.)

David, still sobbing in pain from the sudden loss of his hand and his near evisceration, still managed to give me a shaky sneer as his good hand grasped my flanks. "How… how about if I just touch you then?" He was already morphing his damaged hand away, the pain leaving him as he recovered. As his fingers touched my side, I felt my vision instantly begin to go dark. It was hard to focus, to think about what was happening. He was absorbing me, or trying to. I had to stop him, had to knock him out, or do something to make him lose focus.

Marco solved my problem for me. His hairy gorilla arms reached down and grabbed David by the head. His hands completely covered the other boy's neck and face. (Hey David.) He began conversationally. (How about you take your hand off my pal Jake before I twist your head off like a soda cap, you little psycho?)

"Jake! Marco!" Cassie's voice finally made it through to me and I felt her hand replace David's on my side. I turned my head to look at her, and froze. It was the first time that I had a full view of Cassie at the age she was. Tobias had been right; she was at least nineteen years old, probably closer to twenty. Her eyes were full of concern as she knelt on the floor on my right side, coaxing me with her hand.

I lost myself in staring at her, and before I could speak, she put one finger up to my muzzle as though to stop me. "Shhh. I know." Her voice sounded pained, which confused me.

(Cassie, what's going o--) My question was interrupted by David. He'd recovered enough that our momentary advantage was gone. His head, which Marco had been holding, was suddenly his hand as his head reappeared to the side, his entire body rearranging itself in a strange, rapid way like the T-1000 in Judgment Day. Before either of us knew what had happened, he had completely morphed around us so that instead of his head being in Marco's hands and his legs being pinned under me, he had one hand in Marco's grip and one hand on my chest. Then he heaved and Marco flew back into the wall while I was knocked across the room.

Marco was peeling himself off the wall while I got my feet back under me. I saw David break for the door, where Cassie stood. (Cassie!) I yelled, not even sure what I wanted her to do. I lunged. David would have to break to the right to get around Cassie and then I could slow him down long enough for Marco to…

But it didn't happen that way. Instead, Cassie simply stepped to the side, allowing David to pass. I stopped short in disbelief, staring as David hit the doorway and kept running. From below, I could hear people shouting. The roars from the tiger and all the crashing drew too much attention.

I couldn't worry about that right then, couldn't even think about it. Instead, I just stared at Cassie. (Why….) I began carefully. (Why did you let him go? Why did you step aside, Cassie? You could have slowed him down. We could have stopped him, together.)

Marco joined me, his gorilla eyes narrowed in suspicion. (Yeah… what's going on? Why do you look like that? David's quick, but you stepped out of the way, Cassie. You let him go.)

I saw tears falling from Cassie's eyes suddenly, as she struggled to explain. "No… I can't. I couldn't."

(Why?) Marco demanded, angrily. (We need help! Are you one of us or not?)

Her voice was small, and quiet. "… not."

I sat back on my haunches, stunned. (What? What do you mean? Cassie…) I wanted to reach to her, but I was too confused, and angry. (What do you mean you're not one of us?)

"I can't be, Jake." Cassie's voice was pleading, as her tears fell. "I can't interfere. I can't stop him directly. I can't change anything. It's not allowed. It's against the rules."

(Rules!?) Marco yelled back at her, furious. (What rules? Now you're talking like that massive pain in the ass jerk Ellimist!)

Somehow, I knew what Cassie was going to say before she said it. Her words echoed in my head, and would irrevocably change both my life, and the way I fought this war. Her voice was a mixture of sadness and pride, regret and determination as she slowly lowered her head and brought it up again in a single nod. "Yes…" She said simply. "That's why I can't be one of you, why I can't interfere directly. I'm not who I was anymore, Jake. Crayak has the Drode… and now the Ellimist… has me."


	21. The Threat Chapter Eight

Thanks for all the comments about taking my time and for understanding my delay, everyone. I hope your sociocultural criticism turned out all right, Belle. Let me know how you did. ;) And atlastme, I'm glad you like my turn for Cassie. Her reasoning for not intervening is explained a little more in this chapter.

Speaking of this chapter, this is the final part to The Threat. Next up is Rachel in The Solution. Hope to see you all there, and enjoy! And always remember, free or dead.

Chapter Eight

(Okay… one…) I said carefully. (What do you mean, Ellimist has you? What happened to you after David absorbed you?)

Marco continued. (And two, what the hell is a Crayak. Three, what the hell is a Drode, and four, for the love of god, how is David morphing like that? Actually, if you could skip to the last one first, please. I don't think I've questioned my sense of reality so much since the moment Buffy suddenly had a sister.)

After three seconds of a girl and a tiger peering quizzically at him, Marco looked down, waving a gorilla arm. (Rachel would have gotten it. Never mind, just answer the questions. How is he morphing straight from one form to another? Because, you know, besides rewriting every rule of human science, morphing was supposed to have its own laws. Sure we've bent them before but that was like… morphing allergy. He's doing it on purpose.)

(Marco…) I said, starting to shift back to my own form. (Since when do you know anything about the rules of science? You got a D in that. Again.)

(Oh yeah, forgive me.) Marco retorted as he began to demorph as well. (Somehow my ability to realize that a guy shapeshifting into a gorilla is beyond human science didn't translate into an automatic A. I'm as shocked as you.)

We were interrupted by the sound of Cassie laughing. The two of us were demophing quickly, but for the moment our thoughtspeak had vanished and our human voices hadn't come in yet. Cassie's fingers were over her mouth as her shoulders shook a little. She looked apologetic. "Sorry… I'm sorry; I just… missed listening to you guys."

Marco and I exchanged a look as both of our human heads formed almost simultaneously. Then something occurred to me. "Wait, all that noise had to have alerted the entire resort. We've got to get out of here." Actually it surprised me that we didn't hear a platoon of soldiers frantically running toward us already.

Cassie shook her head. "It's okay. I muffled the sound. No one heard a thing. It's… all I could do."

"Muffled the sound…Right. So about that explanation?" I pressed her.

Still smiling a little, Cassie let out a long, slow sigh. "I… I'm from the future, Jake." She corrected herself. "A future. You see, there are—"

"Yeah, we got it." Marco interrupted, brushing himself off as he stood from the floor. "Multiple possible futures, all splitting off from random decisions. We too read Michael Crichton." He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "So, assuming you're telling the truth, what are you doing here now?"

Cassie looked torn for a moment, and then spoke again. "I'm from the future before it was changed by Crayak." Before we could question her again, she held up a hand and went on. "Crayak is the enemy to the Ellimist. You saw him, Jake, in your dreams."

Marco turned to me and I got it a moment later. "In my… the eye. The…" I shuddered. Ever since I'd been briefly taken over by a yeerk, I'd been experiencing nightmares about a great mechanical eye that pulsed with evil. I raised my gaze to Cassie's familiar, yet different face. "That thing has a name?"

"Crayak." She confirmed. "He and the Ellimist are… opposing forces. Crayak wants to get rid of every form of life in the universe by pitting races against each other until only one of them is left standing, which would be subservient to him."

"If he's an enemy to the Ellimist…" I started with a frown. "Then he could take us out at any time. He could snap his fingers and we'd be dead. What gives?"

Marco answered before Cassie could. "That's the thing; he is as powerful as the Ellimist, which means the Ellimist is as powerful as him. They probably can't do stuff like that or they'd wipe out the whole galaxy and nothing would be left at all."

"Yeah, that's… pretty much." Cassie nodded. "They nearly wiped out the universe the first time they really fought, so they made up these rules. They can influence, change things, but they can't directly affect something except in rare case where they both agree to terms… like a bet."

"We're chess pieces." Marco said bitterly. "They're playing on fifty different game boards, and we're just one. The yeerks are on the other side, and they just move us around. Does any decision we make even matter?"

Cassie looked imploringly to both of us. "Yes, yes it matters. Of course it matters. That's the Ellimist's entire point to what he's doing. If he wasn't here to oppose Crayak, then we'd all be dead. Or enslaved. He's doing the best he can for us, letting us make the big decisions and trying to ensure that we're able to make those decisions."

"Cassie…" I said, wanting to reach out to her, but hesitant. "You said that you're from a future before Crayak changed it. What happened?"

She smiled a little bitterly. "We won, Jake. We won the war. I can't tell you how. I'm sorry, I can't. That's… part of the rules. We won, but there was…. so much of a price… Crayak… approached one of us, and made a deal that he would reset time back to this point, but no one would remember what happened. We'd have to succeed or fail all over again."

That hit me hard. "We won? Wait, we won the war. The yeerks lost, and we beat them?" I rocked back on my heels, absorbing that. "Then… why… why would any of us choose to go through this again?"

"Like I said… there was a price." Cassie said quietly. "We lost a lot… and… whoever made this deal with Crayak thought we could do it better if we had another chance. We got a do-over, Jake. But before that timeline was erased, the Ellimist and Crayak each pulled one person out of it."

Marco raised an eyebrow, getting it. "That would be you and David. That's why David keeps going on about Crayak and… something we did to him."

Unable to stop her wince, Cassie nodded. "Yeah… we… David found the box originally. We… took him onto the team, but he turned against us. He nearly killed us, and threatened to reveal us to Visser 3 unless we gave the box back to him so he could go off and make his own team. We… trapped him…. We trapped him in rat morph, and then left him on an island. It seemed better than killing him."

"Okay…" Marco said, since I was still trying to absorb this news. "I guess in a really whacked way, that makes sense, but what about his majesty's new super-morphing ability?"

We were interrupted then by a quiet knocking at the door. All three of us jumped guiltily. Marco started to get up to creep over to the peephole, but Cassie spoke without moving. "It's Tobias."

After giving her a weird look, Marco pulled the door open and sure enough, Tobias stepped inside. He was in his human form. "Hey, guys, we…" He paused, looking at Cassie. His expression didn't change from his intense stare, but I didn't know if that was because he'd seen her from the window before or because he still tended to forget to show facial expressions from so much time as a hawk. Finally, he spoke. "So it is you…. Cassie, what…" He looked back and forth between all of us, seeming to realize that he had interrupted her explanation. "Sorry… we've got the guy, Jake. Ax and Melissa are watching him."

I looked to Cassie, who nodded. "I'll talk to everyone. It'll be better that way." I opened my mouth, and she went on. "I'll explain everything that I can, Jake. I promise."

Deciding that had to be good enough, I told Tobias to lead us to the other room, and five minutes later, Marco, Tobias, Ax, Melissa, and I stood around, staring at this strangely familiar yet incredibly different young woman as she explained everything she had already told Marco and myself. The man that the other three had kidnapped was tied up and blindfolded unconscious in the bathtub, and the door was closed. Ax was sure that he wouldn't wake up for a couple hours.

Once she had finished, and everyone else was caught up, I asked her something that had been bothering me. "Did David attack Jordan? Was it his fault something happened to her, to get Rachel away from us?"

We all watched while Cassie seemed to consider that for a long few moments. When she finally answered, her tone was cautious. "I… I'm not sure… he might have, it sounds like something he might do… and he hated Rachel."

Melissa, who had been staring intently at Cassie the entire time, as though trying to figure something out, spoke up. "I… I know you. I saw you…"

Cassie turned to the other girl and nodded. "I know. I made sure you were the one who found the blue box. I wanted you to be the one who found it, because… I knew David would go after the younger me, and I wanted them to have help. In… another timeline, when Rachel wasn't around, Melissa was one of us. So I knew she could help. I made sure she got the box, and that she saw what happened."

While Melissa went quiet, thinking about that, Marco shook his head. "So let me get this straight, you knew that future David would go after you, so you brought in Melissa to… what, take your place?"

Cassie flinched at those terms. "Not…. exactly like that, but I guess… sort of?" She sighed. "I didn't want you guys to be at a disadvantage. So I did what I could, within the rules."

"Well that's…." I glanced to Melissa, and then looked back to Cassie. "That's all great but I've got news for you, we're already at a disadvantage. Have you seen what David can do?"

Before Marco could finish demanding an explanation for that again, Cassie said. "Yes, you see… Crayak used David against Rachel. He tried to turn her into a murderer, but she wouldn't do it. She refused to kill David, so Crayak took him and made him a soldier. He… gave David his new morphing ability, but there was a price."

"It turned him batshit insane?" Marco asked, only half kidding.

Cassie nodded to him gravely. "Pretty much. He was never… good, Jake, but he wasn't this bad either. When Crayak changed him, it… did something to David. It made him… worse. I tried to get through to him in that room, but… I don't know if it's possible now. His mind is so messed up. I don't know exactly what Crayak did, but it tore David apart. And he's been absorbing people… minds… that he can't shut out."

"Sorry, but I can't work up any sympathy." Marco retorted. "That guy's a freak show, and in case you missed it, he absorbed you."

I asked quickly. "Can we free you? Can we get you out of him?"

After a brief hesitation, Cassie shook her head. "I don't know, Jake. I don't… think so…" She looked a little pale. "It's… I think I'm gone, Jake."

I reeled from that, putting my hands up over my face with a shudder. I always knew that I liked Cassie. I mean… liked, but I never realized how much she meant to me until she'd been in danger. I felt cold, and distant.

Marco took up the questioning while I couldn't. "So Crayak sent future David back here while Ellimist sent you. While you were busy pushing Melissa onto our side, what was David doing?"

"I… I don't know, exactly." Cassie admitted. "I know he took his own body just after the younger him ran away from the Visser, but I don't know what he was doing before that."

Tobias, who had had more contact with the Ellimist than any of us, stepped over by Cassie. "Did he promise you something? Did he do something for you besides send you back here?"

"He…" Cassie hesitated. "I can't… tell you that part. If I did I'd be breaking the rules, and if we break the rules, Crayak can break the rules. Trust me; you don't want to give him an excuse. I…"

She was interrupted by Melissa, who had been standing near the window while we talked to Cassie. Her voice was high with surprise. "Hey! David… he just… he just walked off the grounds." She was pointing out the window.

That brought me around. "Huh? What do you mean he's gone? David? Where would he go?"

Her head shook a little. "I don't know… but he's not on the grounds anymore. I just saw him… he walked up to the edge of the field, put his hand out… then he disappeared and a second later he was on the other side, walking away."

"How is that possible?" Marco demanded. "That forcefield's supposed to keep us inside. People with morphing power can't cross it without…" He made a vaporizing sound and threw his hands apart to simulate an explosion.

Cassie nodded. "There is a field, but David's different than you guys. He can do things that you can't, like make his body small enough to fit through the forcefield, then reform on the other side."

I sighed, feeling a headache as I pinched the bridge of my nose. "So David can come and go as he pleases, but we're stuck here."

Ax swung his stalk eyes around to me. (That does not make sense. We have determined that David's goal was to absorb the Visser and take over the invasion. What reason would he have to leave?"

Marco took up the line then. "Did we miss something? And if he's got something else going on, what are we supposed to do about it?"

Cassie held up her hands to forestall any more demands for answers. "I don't know guys. I don't know. I have… some abilities, because of what the Ellimist did to me, but I'm not omnipotent. I don't know what he's doing, but… I have a… theory."

Marco started to say something, but I spoke up first. "What's your theory… Cassie?" It still hurt to look at her, but I didn't care what she thought. There was a way to pull… the real Cassie out of David. There had to be. Just because this Cassie didn't know about it didn't mean anything. She'd already said she wasn't omnipotent. We'd find the way to save Cassie. I kept telling myself that, because at the moment it was the only way I could function.

She hesitated before going on. "I…. Crayak has always had more than one enemy on this planet. Years… centuries ago, he sent his creations against a peaceful race. They wiped them out, killed almost all of them in their war. The rest were killed by a plague…"

Tobias got it, and nodded. "The Pemalites. Crayak was the one who sent the Howlers after them?"

Cassie shuddered, as though she could remember exactly what happened to that poor slaughtered race. Who knew, maybe at this point she could. Cassie had always been empathic in a way I would never understand, and now, there was no telling what she could feel. "Crayak never saw it as a complete success. The Chee were still around, and since they were creations of the Pemalites, according to Crayak's logic the race hadn't been completely exterminated. He's always looked for a way to force them to either break their programming and become violent, or destroy them.

"But he can't destroy them, at least not without violating the rules by getting too directly involved." I said slowly. "Because the Chee are too advanced, too strong." I paused, then added. "Right?"

"Until now, yes." Cassie said. "But the powers that he gave David aren't limited to absorbing organic material. He can also absorb metal, and technology. All he has to do is lay his hand on Erek, or any of the Chee, and he can take them into himself… gain their abilities… their knowledge… their strength."

"Why now?" Tobias wondered. "Why is Crayak intent on getting the Chee right now?"

Marco answered him. "Look at what's going on. This is the Yeerk's big play, and we're right here to stop them. Why? Because the Chee told us about it. I think Crayak's a little pissed about that."

Ax spoke up then. (So he has chosen to take action while we are confined to this location. There is plenty of time to absorb the Visser before the end of this gathering of your world's leaders. David in charge of the invasion would be bad, but with the Chee in place we could recover, and we would still have our spies in place that could interrupt his plans. So this Crayak sent David to destroy the Chee and remove that possibility while we are unable to assist them.)

My fists clenched impotently. "He's going to attack Erek and the other Chee, and they don't even know he's a threat. Even if they did, they can't fight back. They're helpless."

Melissa started quietly. "And since we're trapped here…"

I put my hands up as the slow realization came full force. "That's why David wanted us to bring him here. He wanted to be absolutely certain we were stuck, trapped behind the forcefield so it was impossible for us to help. We can stop Visser 3 and the yeerks, but if David takes the Chee, we might as well have lost."

Tobias shook his head, his eyes on the window. "But we're not all stuck…"

I nodded and slowly turned to match his gaze to the window. "No…" I looked back to the others. I knew that each felt as helpless as I did at that moment.

Cassie's voice said what we were all thinking. "Rachel."

My voice felt like it was coming from far away, like I was observing myself from somewhere else. I'd never felt so played, so helpless, or so stupid. "She's the only one who can do anything." I felt hollow. "Rachel is the only one who can stop David"

Melissa voiced the question on all of our minds. "And… if she can't?"

"Then…" I said flatly. "We lose."

To Be Continued in Book 22: The Solution

My name is Rachel…

.


	22. The Solution Chapter One

Wow! Amazing reviews. Thanks you guys! And Belle, thanks for making me laugh, but no, I am most definitely not K.A. I just grew up with Animorphs and want to contribute what I can to the story. If other people enjoy it, that makes me feel really good. And sorry, but I know about as much about sociocultural criticism as I know about Z-Space physics. Actually, scratch that. I probably know more about the Z-Space. ;)

Anyway, I'm glad you guys enjoy reading my work, and I hope I continue to do the characters, and the story justice. Here we go with Book 22.

The Solution

Chapter One

My name is Rachel. And at that moment, I didn't care about the Animorphs. I didn't care about the Yeerks. I didn't care that right now my friends were trying to stop the leaders of the free world from being enslaved by brain infesting slugs from outer space. All I cared about was that my sister was probably going to die.

I was standing in the hallway outside of the room where Jordan was being kept in intensive care. My mother was in there with her, and I was watching Sara to give her a chance. Dad was in there too. He'd flown down earlier.

I'd lost track of how long I'd been sitting here, just waiting. After I finally to the hospital around early afternoon, Mom said they had Jordan in surgery for several hours before finally sending her here. They were going to do more surgeries in the morning, but things didn't look good.

There have been so many times in the past where I've been terrified. I've been scared out of my mind, absolutely certain that I was going to die. I have faced Hork-Bajir whose blades could cut me in half with a flick of their wrist, or just open up my stomach to let me die slowly. I've seen Visser Three become creatures that will haunt me forever. I have seen this alien invasion spreading like a disease over the entire earth while everything we do seems to accomplish nothing. But I have never felt as helpless as I did right then.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, if you don't know who I am, or who we are, you need to back up. By now you should know exactly what's going on. Our world has been invaded by an alien species called Yeerks. They look like gray slugs that squirm and crawl into your brain through your ear and take over. They control you, completely. Everything you look at, everything you do, the yeerk chooses. You are a passenger in your own body.

They are here, and no one is fighting them. No one even knows about them. No one that is, except for me and my friends. Six human kids and one alien cadet are earth's only hope. Originally it was me, my cousin Jake, his dork friend Marco, my best friend Cassie, and Tobias, the kind of shy, quiet boy who only ever wanted to belong. Later we rescued Ax. He was an Andalite, the only race still fighting against the Yeerk Empire. We found him where he had been stranded in the middle of the ocean. And finally, just recently, Melissa, another of my friends, joined us after she found out the truth, that her own parents were infested and her father was one of the leaders of the invasion. That's all of us. That is the thin line standing between the forces of the Yeerk Empire and earth itself.

But we do have a weapon. Before the Andalite Prince who told us about the invasion died, he gave us a power. He gave us the ability to morph, to become any animal that we can touch. With this weapon we have hurt the yeerks. We will continue to hurt them. We will fight them with everything we have, because to do any less, would be the same as dragging my family and friends down into that disgusting hellpit of a Yeerk Pool and shoving their heads into the sludge myself so they could be infested… enslaved.

Some people think I'm crazy, that I only care about the killing and the fighting. They think because I volunteer for every extreme, probably suicidal mission that I'm insane. In some ways they're probably right about me. None of us, no one, could go through all of this without losing ourselves at least a little. I know I'm not the same person I was when this all started.

Am I insane? Probably. But that is not why I volunteer to do everything dangerous. It's not why I want so badly to take every battle straight to the yeerks, to hurt them as much as possible. It's not why my answer to every suicidal plan we hatch is 'Let's do it'. I say those things, and do those things, because I'm the one that can. There are thousands of humans out there, enslaved by the Yeerks, who don't have a choice anymore. They will never be free unless we win this war, unless we take a few chances.

So, am I insane? I might be, but I'd rather be insane than look my family in the eyes after this is all over and have to say that we did anything less than absolutely everything we could to save humanity. When all is done, no matter how it ends, I will stand and say that I fought with claws and teeth or with bleeding, broken knuckles. I will never surrender, and I will never choose to take the easy path.

I had a lot of time to think about all of that while I was waiting for news about Jordan. So much had happened in the past couple of days that sitting for so long felt wrong somehow. Even though all I could focus on was my sister in the other room, broken and close to death, I still knew what my friends were going through.

The Yeerks were going after a supposedly secret peace summit meeting at this resort between six of the world's leaders. If they took those people, we might as well have already lost. On top of that, Melissa, who up to that point had been an innocent bystander, got mixed up in all of this after she found the blue box that Elfangor used to give us our powers. She chose to join us, which was good because we needed all the help we could get on this mission, especially since Cassie was attacked by what you might call our other problem. His name was David, and somehow he not only had the power to morph, but he could do it better than anyone. He didn't just absorb the dna of the animal, he absorbed the body itself. He'd done it to Cassie, and if I wasn't here with Jordan I would be tearing that resort apart looking for him so I could pull her out of him. I had to trust Jake to deal with David for now, so that I could be here, where my family needed me.

I'd be there with them, but we had found out that Jordan was hit by a van and was in bad shape. It was hard, probably one of the hardest decisions I'd ever made, but I chose to leave my friends and come here to be with my family. I knew at the time that I wasn't just leaving for a time. There was a shield over the resort that would make so if I left, I couldn't get back until everything was over. I chose to sit out this fight, because my sister needed me.

As I stood there with my back to the wall, trying to my shoulders from shaking from the memory of seeing my little sister lying broken in that hospital bed, Sara put her hand on my arm. She's the youngest, only ten years old. When I opened my eyes and looked down at her, she tried to smile, but it was weak. "It's going to be okay, right?"

"I don't know. Stop asking me that." I shrugged my arm free and turned away, feeling like the world's biggest creep. She was just looking for some reassurance, and I couldn't even give her that. I was so upset, so helpless myself that I couldn't help Sara feel better.

Hearing her sniff behind me, I sighed and turned back around. I didn't know what I was going to say, but the words came to me as I put my hands out to take both of hers. "Look, Sara, I don't know if it's going to be okay. I don't know what's going to happen. But those doctors are going to do everything they can for Jordan. They're the best, all right? But no matter what, mom, and dad, and me will be here for you."

Sara glanced down at the floor, and then looked back up to me. Her gaze was solemn as she thought about what I said, and then she spoke quietly. "That kind of sucked, you know? You're supposed to tell me that Jordan's gonna be fine, that she'll be okay."

I covered my mouth to hide a smile that felt like a sob. Even though I tried hard not to let it, my voice broke a little. "Maybe…." I swallowed hard. "Maybe you should tell me that part."

She put her arms up, and I knelt there on the hospital floor. She put her arms around me and I held my little sister close. She whispered to me. "It's gonna be all right, Rachel." Her voice was so sad, yet so brave, that I couldn't help but embrace her tighter.

That was when one of the nurses walked up to us. After we both looked up, she looked to me and cleared her throat. "Miss? I believe you have a phone call." She pointed back to the nurses' station and I blinked before following her there. I felt Sara trailing behind me.

At the desk, the nurse hit a button on the phone and handed me the receiver. Hesitantly, I took it and said, "Hello?"

"Rachel." It was Jake's voice. He sounded tense. "How is she?"

There were a dozen things I wanted to ask him, but I couldn't, not on a phone line that the Yeerks could be listening in on. "She's not good, Jake. She's…. they think…" I turned away from the nurse. "They don't think she's going to make it."

Jake sounded torn, like he hated himself for what he was about to say. After he said it, I think I hated him a little too. "We need your help."

I frowned. I'd made my decision. I was out of this fight. I couldn't even go back if I wanted to. What was he getting at? "Jake, you know I can't. I'm… I'm here. I can't go there with you."

Sara tugged on my sleeve. "Jake? What does Jake want?" She was confused, because as far as she knew, Jake and his family just left half an hour ago. Actually, 'Jake' had been one of our Chee allies, hyper-advanced robots that can project holograms to disguise themselves as anyone. They helped us by taking our places when we couldn't be around.

I waved my hand at her. "Not now, Sara, please. I need to talk." I turned from her and took a step away, stretching the cord with me. "What?"

Jake's voice was strained. He knew what he was asking. "That… project that the rest of us are working on. We can't finish it. David skipped out on us. He just took off. He's not here anymore. We kind of need you to find him."

I squeezed the receiver tighter. He was telling me that David had somehow left the resort and they were still trapped inside. "I think the project can wait, Jake."

"I don't think it can." He sounded hesitant, like he wanted to tell me something important, but was holding off. "See, we think he's heading for the other group. You know, our friend Erek? We're pretty sure David wants something from them. You know how he gets when he wants something."

I frowned a little more. Somehow David knew about the Chee, and was going to attack them. Could he even hurt them? If Jake was telling me, warning me to do something, that must have meant that he could. "Jake…" I said, feeling even worse. "I'm sorry… I… It's Jordan… I know David is…"

Before I could go on, Sara was tugging on my sleeve again. "David! Rachel, David?"

I was getting annoyed. Turning to her, I spoke. "Sara, please! I need to talk to Jake. What is it?"

She bit her lip, looking hesitant. "It's just… David… When… me and Jordan were out playing… before…" She looked like she was about to cry for a moment, but got it under control, though her eyes watered. "There was a guy. He tried to talk to us, but mom says not to talk to strangers, and he was really strange. We kept riding our bikes away from him, and he… he yelled at us. He said, 'Tell Rachel, it was David.'. I… I forgot… after…"

She trembled, and I felt myself go cold. I stared at her, knowing exactly what had happened. David had left me a message. It was him. He was the reason Jordan was lying in that hospital room, probably dying. He was the one who had driven that van that hit her. He did it to attack me. He wanted to get my attention. Well, now he had it.

Slowly, I raised the receiver. "David." I said to Jake, feeling all the anger, all the rage that had been boiling away in me all day, both from my helplessness to help my sister and at David for what he'd done to my best friend. Now I could direct all of it at him. He was responsible. "It was David."

He said something, but I didn't hear him. I just spoke again over his voice. "He's mine." I dropped the phone then, not caring anymore as I turned away.

Sara was looking at me with wide eyes. "R-Rachel? Where are you going?"

I didn't answer her. I couldn't. I just pointed back to the room where she should wait, and then started to walk. I didn't care what he could do. Between the two of us, it was David that had no idea what I was capable of. "David…" I spoke as I moved faster, hitting the doors at a run. "You're mine!"


	23. The Solution Chapter Two

Hey guys, here's the next chapter. There's a little something special in there for you, SouthrnBelle, that I hope you'll like. ;) And nope, sorry guys, still not Applegate over here, I swear. You can call me whatever you like though. I answer to all kinds of things.

Atlastme, I'm really glad you thought it was constructed well, because I've been waiting to really write Rachel this entire time. (The next person I'm waiting to write is Tobias)

Which brings me to MogGuy's question. Am I stopping after this book? I don't think so. I want to keep going, and as long as people like to read it, then I'll keep writing. Let me know what you guys think. Also, should I keep going on it like I am with putting them all in this one story, or after this trilogy should I put the new books in their own stories and name them like… Animorphs Redux: The Lost?

Anyway, here you go.

Chapter Two

It took ten minutes to fly to the King's residence once I found a place to morph. As much as I wanted the power and majesty I felt in my bald eagle morph, it was too dark. The night belonged to the owls, and I was now one of them. I slipped soundlessly through the air as the world below me was lit up as though a spotlight had been turned on. I could fly without a sound, and spot the difference between the quiver of a blade of grass and a rodent's nose. If there was any chance of spotting David, this was it.

The problem was I didn't know what I was looking for. It was easy to start to understand why the Yeerks hated all of us so much. He could be anything, or anyone. I was stuck keeping an eye out for anything that looked… not like an animal should. Was that dog running by itself down the street just out for a playful romp, or was it David doing reconnaissance? Was the cat on that front porch swing simply enjoying the evening breeze, or was the position of the house across from the Kings a set-up for David to spy on them? Every animal, and every person, was a potential threat.

The entire time that I was flying to the Chee household, I couldn't stop thinking about Jordan, and about Cassie. So far David had attacked, and maybe killed, my sister and my best friend. When I found him, I wasn't going to hold back. I wasn't going to give David a chance to hurt anyone else. I was going to make David release Cassie. And then… I shut my mind away from that line of thinking. If Jordan didn't make it, if she died because of him, because of this war… I refused to consider the possibility. Right now I had a target. I had a purpose. David had to be stopped.

Of course, before I could stop him, I had to find him. That was proving more difficult, and the longer it took, the harder it was to keep my mind away from the night's tragic possibilities.

I knew I'd have to explain to my parents why I'd run out on them, why I'd left Sara alone. But I'd just say I couldn't handle it anymore, that the stress had gotten to me. It wouldn't be a stretch.

The neighborhood stretched out below me, teeming with more life than the average human even imagined might be right outside their door. Rats, dogs, cats, birds, raccoons, even foxes moved through the darkness, hunting and being hunted. And in the same darkness, I hunted as well. And my prey was the most dangerous of all.

This wasn't getting me anywhere. David could have been any or none of the animals down there. Maybe the Chee would have a better idea. I flew down into their backyard, landing silently before changing back into myself.

Morphing is never a clean or orderly process. Some things change quickly, all at once, and others can take until the very end. In this case, my wings changed first. The feathers melted into skin, like I was molting dramatically. My fingers emerged and twisted into their recognizable shape as my arms extended. Soon I looked like a full owl with human arms in place of my wings. I shuddered from the weird freak show reflected back at me from the glass patio door, and continued the change. Soon my blonde hair pushed its way out of the back of the owl head as I grew. I was getting larger, and my legs finally began to emerge.

The entire process took a couple minutes, and by then I still wasn't sure of what I was going to do here. I stood up and took another glance around, but if I hadn't seen anything worthwhile as an owl, I sure wasn't going to see it as a human. We, as a species, are pretty much completely blind.

For a few minutes, I just folded my arms and paced around the backyard. What was I doing? I had to find David, but did we even have any evidence that he knew who the Chee were? Jake had said that they found out David wanted something from them, or wanted them for something, but what? And how did they know that? There was something that Jake had wanted to tell me, but either couldn't, or wouldn't, over the phone.

Finally, I went up to the back door and knocked loudly on the glass. Almost an instant later a light came on, half blinding me. I staggered back with my hand up to shield my eyes as the door slid open. "Owww…" I complained, squinting. "Erek, turn down the light, jeeze."

"Sorry." Erek spoke apologetically, and the light dimmed considerably. I could look at him directly now. "We were just wondering if you were going to come in or stay outside all night."

"You knew I was out here?" I frowned. I'd thought that I had been pretty stealthy.

"Of course." Erek managed one of his wry smiles that makes me wonder just how advanced his AI is. "There are pressure sensors in the ground that registered your landing. We've been watching to see what you did." He lowered his head, and his smile changed to a concerned frown. "Rachel, how is Jordan?"

I ducked my eyes away from his probing gaze. "She's really bad… they don't think she'll make it. There's…" My voice choked up, and I hated myself for losing control. "There's more." I found his eyes again. "It was David. He hit Jordan with the van, to get my attention. And Jake called me…"

I took a minute on that back porch to tell Erek what I'd found out. When I was done, he frowned before stepping back. "Come in. We will need to… discuss this."

"No." I shook my head. "I need to be out there looking for David, before he gets in here. You guys can't fight. You'll be liabilities if he gets into the house."

Erek seemed to take no offense at that. "Rachel, if you could have found him, you never would have landed here and demorphed. Come inside, maybe we can figure something out together."

As much as I wanted to argue, there was really nothing I could say to that. With a sigh, I stepped past him into the house. As usual, the place looked completely normal. There was a laptop on the kitchen table with a webpage opened to google, an empty root beer bottle next to the sink, and someone in another room was watching what sounded like bugs bunny on the television. No one who came in here would have guessed that this house was the home of a race of super advanced alien androids that had lived on earth since the time of the pharaohs.

It took a few minutes for Erek to gather the Chee who were in the house and not off playing their various roles. There were seven of them. There was Erek, the Chee who played his father, two others whose holograms looked to be about Erek's age, an older woman, a man with a grocery store apron from one of the major chains who had just come back from work, and a woman I recognized from one of the stores in the mall.

The older woman shook her head. "This boy cannot be a threat. He may try to harm us, but he will not be able to." I recognized her as the woman named Maria who had first argued against Erek bringing us into this house and telling us about the Pemalites. Her real name was Chee-lonos.

"You can't be sure of that." I argued, frustrated by the general lack of concern from the rest of the Chee. Only Erek seemed to feel that it was worth talking about. "I'm telling you, David can do things, impossible things. And if Jake sent me here to try to stop him, that means he's a threat."

The old woman shook her head. "And we are to believe the word of one young human? Your Jake could easily be mistaken. The Chee have lived peacefully on Earth for thousands of years. There is no reason to believe that one person is a threat to that."

Erek spoke up on our behalf. "Even if there isn't a danger to us, we shouldn't sit idle and let one develop. As long as David is a threat to anyone on this planet, he's a threat to us." He pressed on despite the woman starting to interrupt him. "We care about the life on this planet. If he threatens it, our programming would force us to obey his commands."

The grocery clerk stepped in then. "No matter the threat, we could never do anything that would harm a living being. Surely he would realize this."

One of the teenage looking Chee, the female said. "There are things he could want from us that would not result in harming anyone directly, but would still be a threat to this planet, such as our technology. He could request a forcefield for personal protection. To give it to him would not violate our programming, and we would be forced to cooperate if failing to do so would result in the harming of a living being. But armed with this technology, he could do more damage than without it."

Glad that at least someone was thinking ahead, I nodded quickly. "See? There are all kinds of things David could do without directly hurting you."

Maria frowned. "Chee-Suthren, you understand that we cannot take an active stand against this person. What would you have us do?"

Before the girl could respond, Erek spoke again. "We should leave this place. If David can't find us, he can't blackmail us."

Now one of the other Chee, the boy our age shook his head. "Leave this house? What of our underground home?" I knew that beneath the Chee house there was an enormous tree filled park packed full of dogs, dozens of them. When the Chee first arrived on earth with the last remnants of their dying creators, they had infused the Pemalite souls with the native wolves and created the dogs we see around us every day. That's why they have such a special, loving relationship with every dog that crosses their path. There were even two or three of the animals lounging around the house that I could see from the kitchen. They would never leave all the canines behind to face David's wrath.

The girl who had agreed with Erek put her hand on the table. "We can lock ourselves in there, close down all access to the lower levels until this situation is resolved. There is no need for us to put ourselves or anyone at risk, even if you do not think there is a threat." She sounded slightly scornful at the end, as though she couldn't understand why some of the Chee refused to see this as a real problem.

The Chee named Maria paused, and then seemed to decide that there was no reason to argue with that. "That is acceptable. If we cannot be contacted, we cannot be used against the humans. But…" She looked to the Chee who played Erek's dad. "How can we be certain that enough time has passed that the threat has been ended? And what of the Chee that are not here now?"

That stopped me. I groaned. "Ohhh no." When the Chee all looked to me, I winced. "I thought coming here would help. But David isn't coming here. He has no idea where this place is. He's going after the other Chee, the ones playing us, I mean playing the others. The Chee that are taking the others places while they're stuck inside the resort."

Erek frowned. "We can contact them over the Chee-Net and warn them of the situation." He paused, cocking his head to the side like he was listening to something, and then straightened. "The Chee who are impersonating Marco and Cassie reported in, but the one who is Jake is not responding."

I looked at him, folding my arms. "What does that mean? Could he be going through a tunnel or something?" Okay yeah, stupid question, but I had to ask.

He shook his head, looking troubled. "I don't know. There is no reason for his lack of response. We are always connected. There's no such thing as out of range on this planet. And our signal can reach through miles of steel and rock, let alone a simple tunnel. No, something is… very wrong."

"That's it." I said quickly, turning to the door as I felt like an idiot. "David went after the Chee playing Jake. That's where I'll pick up the trail."

"Wait." Erek put his hand up to stop me. "You need one of us in case David has done something to Chee-Roven, the one who impersonated Jake. I will—"

Maria shook her head. "You are needed here. Some of the Chee will be hard to convince of the danger." She spoke as though she hadn't just been one of the ones she was talking about. "There are those who think highly of you, for your association with the humans, and those who think badly for the same reasons. But either way, you are listened to. If we are to shut ourselves down below, they will need to hear it from you."

The girl spoke again. "I will go with Rachel to find Roven. I can bring him back online if something has happened to him."

Before they could argue about it anymore, I started to the door again. "Whatever you decide, I'm leaving. If you're coming, let's go now."

I reached the back yard when the girl joined me. Pausing, I gave her a look. "I don't suppose you can morph?"

She returned my look with what I swore was a smirk. "Better. I can drive." She held up a remote key and I heard a car alarm beep as it turned off.

Looking over, I found myself looking at a red convertible. Raising both eyebrows, I started to it. "Great, let's go." I glanced back to her. "Well? Come on."

The Chee girl came after me at a trot. "Of course." She paused, opening the driver's side door. "I thought you should know… I am the Chee who normally takes your place."

Swinging myself into the passenger side, that made me pause and look up. "Uhhh… great to put a face with the person who keeps rearranging my closet. What's your name?"

She turned the key in the ignition and started to back out. "My human name right now is Belle."

"Well, Belle." I said with a grim smile. "Let's go get that psycho."


	24. The Solution Chapter Three

Hey guys, thanks for all the great reviews! I'm definitely going to continue this after this book, and I'll be doing it in new stories with the same Redux precursor. Welcome back, Niori. I'm glad you like what I'm doing still, and that you like Rachel, but ouch, that testing sucks! Good luck, I hope you survive it.

Meiza, thanks for complimenting Melissa. I've been trying to give the girl her own niche and personality, a reason for belonging without overshadowing the others, and it's awesome to see that you think I'm doing that right.

Thanks for your reviews, everyone. They really do make me smile a lot. Here's the next part. I'll just sit over here and cross my fingers for Rachel while you read.

Chapter Three

As we pulled up in front of Jake's house minutes later, I commented. "You know, you're a much better driver than Marco." Not that such an achievement was all that remarkable. Sure, he'd been in gorilla morph when he wrecked Cassie's dad's truck, but I had a pretty good feeling that a real gorilla would have driven better than he did.

Belle gave me a quick smile before turning off the car. We were across from Jake's house. "I have also had a fair bit more practice than he."

"Sure, true." I said while stepping out of the car and looking across the street. "But by that logic, Marco's had his entire life to tell jokes and he still isn't half as funny as he thinks he is."

Belle waited for me to join her on the other side of the car, and we started to walk across the street. The place looked dark except for a light on in Jake's room. My aunt and uncle's van wasn't in the drive, so I assumed they were still out somewhere. Maybe they'd gone to the hospital after I left. There was a sharp stab of pain in my gut at that thought, but I shook it off.

I probably looked strange, a tall, blonde girl with no shoes and a leotard walking across the street, but right then I wasn't thinking about appearances. The only thing on my mind was what to do if David was up in Jake's room with the Chee. My thoughts should have scared me, but I was too angry. I'd cooled off a little during my search, but being this close to where we thought David was just brought my anger back in force. The rat had attacked my sister, and Cassie. That's what he was, a rat. I wasn't sure why the term rat fit so well when I thought of David, but it did. It made me feel just a tiny bit better.

But then I felt worse, and I had no idea why. Finally I just shook it off and walked up to Jake's house, crossing the damp grass to the back gate. Someone had been watering here, and my feet turned cold quickly.

It took just a few moments to get into the side yard directly under Jake's room. Fists clenched, I looked to Belle and spoke quietly. "Can you reach him?"

She was quiet, but then shook her head. "No. Roven is not responding."

I sighed and tilted my head back to see the window above me. Now I had a dilemma. If David was in there, I needed to go in strong, but there was no way I could get my grizzly bear up to the second floor quickly, even if I was able to sneak inside the back door quietly, and the elephant was completely out of the question. I wouldn't even have been able to move, and I even I wasn't crazy enough to try to get an elephant up there. Besides, I already knew what happened when an elephant appeared on a second floor. I didn't want to destroy part of Jake's house the way my uncontrollable morphing awhile back had destroyed mine.

On the other hand, a wolf, the only thing I could think of small enough to get upstairs without trouble, wasn't going to cut it in combat with David. I wasn't even sure the bear would, but a wolf would get demolished.

Besides, I needed to fight him outside, away from the tiny confines of the house.. I groaned. This was so not my department. Usually Jake would be doing this kind of planning. I'm not the type to sit around planning out how to do something. I'm the one that says we should do whatever plan we come up with. Actually coming up with the plan, by myself, was hard.

Eventually I had an idea. I looked to Belle. "Can you project a hologram of Jake's parents getting home? You know, the van pulling in, them getting out and heading inside, with all the noise?"

She nodded immediately. "I can do that. You think David will leave if he thinks they're home?"

I shrugged. "I don't have any better ideas right now. Get ready to do that, but not until I tell you."

Belle stepped away to get ready, and I racked my brain. If David did come out, would he go by air or land? Would he walk away or fly? If I was in the air and he came out as himself or something bigger he'd have the advantage. But if I morphed something on the ground and he flew away, I'd lose him completely. This was why I needed a bear morph with wings.

Finally I knew what I was going to do. To make it work, I needed a morph that I hadn't used in a while. I looked from Jake's window to the large oak tree nearby, and then walked to it. Reaching up, I tested one of the branches. I thought it would hold, but I was going to be a lot bigger than I was now, so all I could do was hope.

Taking a breath, I focused. This was a morph I didn't like to use much, because of the morals involved. But Cassie was Miss Morals, and she… wasn't here. It took a few seconds for the morph to start, and the first change was my neck. It suddenly grew dramatically, leaving me with my shoulders a good two feet below my head. Then it kind of curved over, turning leathery while the rest of my body began to grow as well. I lost a finger on each hand while the rest grew hard claws, and then sharp blades erupted from my forearms. I was becoming a Hork-Bajir. A Hork-Bajir named Jara Hamee, to be exact.

The Hork-Bajir, by nature, are peaceful and, to be frank, a bit dim. I guess they're kind of like pandas in that they'd sit around eating tree bark all day if it was their choice. But the blades on their bodies that they used for stripping bark from the trees and climbing made them ideal shocktroops for the yeerks, who had enslaved the entire species. At least, the entire species until we managed to free a couple and hide them in the mountains. I'd acquired the morph then, but mostly refrained from using it because we didn't like to morph sentient creatures. Somehow it just seemed wrong.

It was hard to care about what was wrong right now though, and I shook off the uneasy feeling. A minute later I was fully morphed. I tilted my narrow head up on my long neck to see the top of the tree, and then started to climb. The tree was huge, taller than Jake's house, but it was easy to climb. The claws in the hork-bajir's hands and its taloned feet made getting to the top a breeze. These guys really were born to live in trees.

As soon as I was as high as I needed to be, I stuck a hand out and forced the strange fingers into a crude thumbs up, hoping that Belle would get the message. She seemed to, because a second later I could see what looked like Jake's parents pull in with their van. They got out, slamming their doors and talking loudly to each other, and I braced myself.

He came to the window within a moment. I couldn't see him, but I could see his shadow block out the light that fell across the grass from the window. The window was shoved open, and I said, just to myself. (Let's do it.) I paused, and then since Marco wasn't there, added. (This is insane.)

Obligatory pre-mission statements fulfilled, I tensed. It only took a second to find out which escape David had chosen. There was a thud as he hit the grass, and then I saw him start to climb the fence into the next yard. The house there was for sale, and fully surrounded by the tall wooden fence, so I wasn't too worried about being seen.

I let David get all the way into the other yard before springing. Throwing myself from the tree, I crashed into him full force, hitting him directly in the back with the hork-bajir's greater weight. David was knocked sprawling across the grass with a loud yell of surprise. I'd taken him completely off guard.

David rolled in the grass, right to the edge of the backyard pool, morphing even as he came back up with a loud growl while flicking his golden mane back. It had taken him only a couple seconds to go from human to lion, a process that would have taken any of the rest of us much longer.

He came up and paused at what he saw. I gave him a hard hork-bajir grin and brought both arms up to bare my wrist blades. (Hey, David.) I said cockily. (You wanted to send a message? I got it.) That was all I said before I lunged at him, swiping down with my left blade. It struck his right shoulder and he roared in pain before slashing up at my arm. His claws tore into the muscle there, but I barely felt it. I was too angry to care about pain right then.

I moved for another slash, but he was on me too quickly. He roared again and came in fast and hard. His right paw smacked the side of my exposed head, knocking me sprawling from the force of it while his claws cut into my long neck. I went down in a heap, then brought my legs up and kicked out blindly, rewarded by his yowl as one of my taloned feet lashed into his stomach in mid-leap. He was knocked back and down, and both of us came back to our feet.

To the left, I spotted something near the pool. It was the blue box, the morphing cube. David had taken it from wherever it had been hidden. That was why he left the house walking, because he had to carry the cube.

In my moment of distraction, David attacked. His fist slammed into my chest, knocking me staggering backward with enough force to break several of the hork-bajir's ribs, or at least what I figured were ribs. Wait, his fist? Sure enough, he'd changed, becoming a light haired gorilla with the fangs of a crocodile. (Rachel!) He crowed, sounding happy. (Glad you made it!) He threw a hard punch at me, but it was slow and I was able to raise my own arm to block it. That turned out to be a mistake as his blow shattered the bone in that arm. It felt like sticking your arm out in the street and having it hit by a semi doing seventy.

David was lunging in and down, ready to tackle me when I fell to my knees so he could close his hands around my throat and finish me, or whatever else he had in mind. He'd get those powerful hands on me and I'd be helpless against this thing's incredible strength.

At least, that's what would have happened if I fell down from the blinding pain of my broken and shattered arm. But I didn't. I was still standing when he tried to anticipate my fall.

It was hard not to fall down and scream in pain, one of the hardest things I've ever done, but I managed to stay on my feet. I think it was the fact that I managed to remain standing through all the agony in my arm that took him by surprise. Which just proved he didn't know me at all. As he tried to correct his anticipatory lunge, I used all the strength in my remaining arm to lash out, driving my wristblade directly into his chest with a scream. (You sonofabitch!)

Blood burst from the gorilla thing's chest as I stabbed as hard as I could into it, lifting him off the ground. What was left of my other arm screamed in protest at the movement, and I saw white through the agony, but continued to haul David up with my good arm. As he flailed in surprise, choking on his own blood, I started to drag my blade down to gut him. Only he wasn't there anymore. Even as my arm moved, he morphed around it, changing form and healing his injury. My bloody wrist blade, which a second ago had been deeply embedded in his chest, was extended through empty air.

Now he was some kind of bipedal wolf creature, about four feet tall. His teeth gave a predatory smile before he dove at my leg. I tried to slash him first, but a flash of pain from my other arm made me flinch. Then his teeth closed around the muscle in my thigh and he bit nearly to the bone. Instantly I crumpled as that leg completely gave out. (Arrrggghhh!)

(Yes!) David yelled in triumph as he tore me to the ground, hanging on like a dog with a stick. (Think you're so brave? You're a coward! They give you morphing power and you think you're some kind of warrior! You'd be nothing without it, just like you're nothing now! You can't even save Cassie. You can't hurt the guy that hurt your sister! You can't do anything that I can't do better! I'm better than you are! Say it!) His teeth closed and snapped the bone in my leg. My arm was shattered, my other arm was pinned under my body, and he had one of my legs literally crushed in his powerful jaw.

I twitched and brought the Hork-Bajir tail up and over to lash at him with the spike, but he was ready for that too. He changed once more, resuming the shape of the gorilla creature. With one hand, he squeezed my leg wound, crushing the bone even more while the other hand morphed into the same giant crab pincer I'd seen before. He caught the tail in mid swing and a second later another shot of agony tore a scream from me as half of the tail fell to the blood drenched cement.

He pressed down close to me, his eager eyes watching mine as he showed his teeth, pressing on my sore chest. (Say… it! Say uncle, Xena. I beat you. I beat you!)

The hork-bajir body was broken. I had one good arm that was still pinned, another arm that had most of the bones shattered in it and was useless, a leg that I could get up and around to where David was in my helplessly prone position, another leg that was in just as bad a shape as my arm, and a useless stump of a tail.

There was every reason for David to be right. He had beaten me down, nearly destroyed me within a few seconds. Most people would have given in. The agony that shot up and down my body in blinding flashes, as well as the increasing difficulty in keeping my eyes open, were a testament to that. Almost anyone would have said it was time to give up.

David leaned even closer, repeating himself. (Do it, Rachel… say I'm better than you.) My eyes focused on his, bleary through the approaching darkness of unconsciousness, and he looked eager to hear my surrender, the surrender that anyone would have given.

But I'm not anyone. I'm Rachel, and I do not surrender. (Well.) I said through the pain that threatened to drive me to tears. (You're certainly dumber than me.) With that, I slammed my head forward and up, driving the head spikes into the gorilla creatures face and neck. David cried out and fell off me. I felt the satisfying feeling of blood dripping down my head and over my eyes. It nearly blinded me, but it was worth it. It was his blood, not mine.

I rolled away, screaming in what might have sounded like rage but was actually torturous pain. My leg was destroyed, but I rose up anyway. I stood on it as every pain receptor in my body shouted in horror. My arm was shattered, but I brought it up next to my undamaged arm anyway. My entire body begged, sobbed to fall down, but I was not going down.

David came up and seemed surprised to find me standing. I was barely up, only hanging on by a thread, but he didn't know that. I bared my teeth and flexed my good hand, barely managing not to fall. (That was fun… let's go again.) I told him, nearly whimpering at the thought.

He took one look, one long hard stare at my standing form, and then took off. He left the box and hauled his butt out of there. It took him only a second to clear the other fence as he vanished into the night.

I stayed like that for another moment, and managed a half delirious. (Ain't so tough now… are ya…?) And then I fell forward, my body broken, my blood nearly gone. I fell over the cube, shielding it with my body.

Then the pain and unconsciousness claimed me, and all I knew was darkness.


	25. The Solution Chapter Four

Hey guys. Thanks for everything you've said, it helps me write better. And Netrat, like I said, it's completely fine if you don't enjoy Melissa. I'll keep writing the way I plan to and hopefully you'll like more things than you dislike.

Enderverse, it's called going back in time because technically that's what they did. Remember that Cassie and David do remember how it used to be, and now Jake and the others know at least some of what happened. I guess it's mostly semantics, but you can call it what you like.

Anyway, sorry for the delay here. First it was my birthday on the 8th, and then I got halfway through the chapter before deciding I hated how it was going and completely rewrote it. I like this one much better.

Chapter Four

I woke to a strange haze of colors. It took me a second to realize that I was seeing the light from passing cars distorted through the windows of Jake's family's garage. I pushed myself up, feeling disconcerted. "What..." My throat felt dry, scratchy, like I just ran a marathon. I had trouble swallowing at first. God was I tired. Morphing heals injuries, but it was exhausting.

From a couple feet away, Belle spoke. "You are safe. Such as it is. I took you in here before you could be seen in your other form. You were losing a lot of blood, so I talked you through demorphing. You were very out of it, so you probably don't remember." She paused before adding with just a hint of teasing to her voice. "You called me Tobias."

I felt a flush of heat touch my face and shook it off, rising to look outside. "Thanks... but David got away. I could barely slow him down." I felt angry, impotent. David had basically plowed right over me like I wasn't there. What was it going to take to put that creep down? He just healed anything we did to him before it could really hurt him. He couldn't be invincible, could he?

"You frightened him." Belle said softly. I turned to retort that he hadn't seemed very afraid while he was gutting me, but she held up a hand. "Not in how you hurt him, but in how you refused to fall. In your situation, he would have fallen. He would have given up. He can't understand people who don't do that. In a way, that makes him exactly like a Yeerk."

I paused before conceding the point as I turned back to look at my aunt and uncle's house. "Did you save the Chee?"

Belle's voice turned regretful. "No. He was not there... I'm... afraid that he was... absorbed by that... David." She sounded almost angry as she went on. "I've alerted the other Chee. No one knows how such a thing would be possible."

"I'll tell you how it's possible." I muttered while looking down at my torn and dirty morphing outfit. "Life's a bitch."

She paused, turning her head to me curiously. "That does not explain much."

"Actually, it explains a lot. It just doesn't make it any easier." I said dryly before sighing. "I need to call Jake. I've got to let him know I messed up. And I need to find out how... how Jordan's doing." My voice caught a little and it again surprised me how much I'd rather risk my life fighting David than sit around the hospital waiting for word on my little sister.

"I can put you in contact with Jake at the resort or your parents at the hospital." Belle said while moving up next to me to look outside.

Glancing sideways at her, I frowned while asking. "What are you going to do, tap into some secret military satellite, reorient it to accept a transmission from you and beam it onto the phone lines at the other end?"

"Perhaps..." Belle replied before holding up a cell phone in her other hand. "But this might be easier. It is untraceable, no technology, human or yeerk, can listen in."

Coughing, I took the phone from her. "Right, of course." I paused then. Hospital or resort, which should I call? I turned the phone over in my hand indecisively, thinking about the numbers. I could call the resort and maybe Jake and the others wouldn't even be in the room. That could be a quick call. The hospital was likely to be much longer and... emotional. I told myself it was the former reason that stopped me from calling there first.

I was halfway through dialing the number that had been on the caller id of the hospital phone before stopping as something occurred to me. I turned back to Belle suddenly. "Wait, the box. The blue box. I was on it, where did it go?" In my initial grogginess, I'd actually forgotten about the thing.

"It's here." Belle confirmed, holding the blue box up in her hand. The sight made me breath out in relief. At least David hadn't gotten the box back. Whatever his plan, we still had that. For all the good it did us.

I nodded and took it from her, tucking the box under my arm. "No offense." I said before turning away. "We'd just rather keep it in our hands." I heard her murmer something about understanding while I redialed and waited for someone to answer.

The phone rang three times before it was picked up. I held my breath, hoping that the number led straight to my friends and not to some front desk area. Thankfully, it was Melissa's voice I heard. She sounded hesitant. "Hello.....?"

"Melissa?" I frowned. Why would she be the one answering? "Why are you picking up the phone?"

"Because it rang." Melissa said quietly, and I could detect a hint of a smile in her voice before she actually explained. "And because we found out Tom got a job out here at the desk, probably because you know what. Jake and Marco said I should answer the phone just in case he's on it, because I'm the one whose voice he's least likely to recognize."

"Right..." I said slowly. That made sense, even Tom having a job at the resort for the duration of this conference. Tom, my cousin and Jake's older brother, was a yeerk. If the stuff he was involved in was any indication, he was also a fairly high ranking one. "Well tell Jake that I need to talk to him and the line is secure. It's a chee thing."

"Oh, okay, sure." Melissa replied after a moment's hesitation. She was still getting used to this whole alien technology thing. Heck, I was still getting used to it. But if the Chee said the line was secure, then the line was secure. If there's one thing they know, it's security.

I heard a rustle and murmer as the phone was passed, and then Jake spoke. "Rachel. Did you find David?"

Wincing, I sighed. "Found him. Couldn't stop him. He took off, but I got the box away from him. He had it." I let Jake absorb that for a moment before adding. "I think he absorbed one of the Chee, the one posing as you. The rest are all locked in their bunker thing, except the one with me."

Jake was silent, and I could tell he was thinking hard. "Great, so David has access to Chee technology." He told the others what was going on, and I tapped my foot impatiently while they caught up. I needed to be out there, hunting David. Not stuck here in some conference call.

I finally interrupted. "Look Jake, you guys try to figure out your thing. I'll track down David again and..." I trailed off. What would I do? Nothing had worked before. Since David could just heal anything I did to him, I was just exhausting myself each time we fought, with no benefit. Morphing didn't even seem to tire him out like it did us. Eventually I just shook my head and finished with. "... and stop him."

There was a sigh from Jake as he responded. "We can't just go off half cocked, Rachel. You have to have some kind of plan, some kind of advantage."

"There isn't any advantage!" I shouted into the phone. "He's the perfect morpher. He has none of our problems and all of our bonuses. He morphs faster than we do, better than we do, and we can't stop...." I trailed off as my eyes widened.

"Rachel?" Jake said quickly. "What happened? What is it? Is David there?" I was silent long enough that he had to yell. "Rachel!"

"Huh?" I came back to myself, startled. "Oh.... I'm..." A slow smile spread over my face. "I'm good. You guys do your thing."

"Do our thing?" Jake repeatedly dumbly. "What are you talking about, Rachel? What's going on?" He paused as someone said something, then added. "Marco says you've probably got some completely suicidal plan and you're grinning like an idiot over how dangerous and completely insane it is."

I felt the grin come just as Jake mentioned it, and laughed a little. Oh how they knew me. "Don't worry, Jake. I can do this."

He pressed me. "Do what? Rachel, you have to tell me what you're planning."

I knew I couldn't tell him what was going through my head. He'd think it was insane. Heck, it probably was. I knew for a fact it was a last ditch, desperate idea. But then again, those are the kind I live for. But if Jake knew what it was, he might just try to forbid it, and I really didn't want to have to ignore him that completely. It was better if he just worried about how dangerous it was rather than actually knowing. Because nothing his imagination could come up with would come near touching the truth. "Just trust me, Jake. You sent me after David, so I'm going after David."

He tried to protest, but I interrupted. "Do your thing, I'll take care of this." Before he could say anything else, I disconnected and gave the phone back to Belle. She took it without comment while looking at me curiously. I paused before asking her three questions. When she answered affirmatively to each, I smiled. "Great. Let's go."

We were at her car a minute later. She was inside as I stood by the door, shivering a little in my torn morphing outfit. "You know what to do?" The entire plan hinged on her ability to do each of the three things I requested.

Belle nodded. "Of course." She paused before adding. "You know that I can't help you with any of the violence."

"Don't worry." I assured her. "You won't be around for any fighting. Just do what I asked and meet me there afterwards for the next thing."

She drove away to do her part and I glanced around before jogging back to the empty house where I'd fought David. The box was clutched tightly in my hand and I felt a little nervous about having it in the open. Any controller that saw me with it would instantly know what it was.

I climbed the fence and then dropped the cool grass. Crouching in the shadows, I started the morph to owl. I needed wings to get where I was going so that I'd be ready before Belle did her part.

About twenty minutes later, I landed in the construction site where this had all began. Finding a dark corner near some open pipes, I demorphed as quickly as I could. Since I couldn't carry any kind of watch, I didn't know how close to time it was. As soon as I finished, I started the morph back to Hork-Bajir. Thanks to the wonders of morphing technology, I could take the same form as earlier without any of the injuries. The dna was intact.

I was fully morphed before the middle of the construction site was lit up from above. I scrunched back into the corner as much as my large body could manage, and waited. Then I heard the hum of the engines as the bug fighter landed.

The ship settled a moment later and I saw the hatch slide open as the Hork-Bajir half of the crew bounded out. The Taxxon would be inside, manning the controls while they searched for the controller who had sent up the signal about finding some remnants of the Andalite ship that had landed months before. I'd figured that with Visser Three consumed by his current mission, something like this would fall to a simple clean up detail. Thankfully, it looked like I was right.

The Hork-Bajir made his way through the darkness, calling out in their strange, stilted language that was half their own and half english. "Strack! Herggn Andalite feshel!" I didn't understand what he was saying, but it was simple enough to tell that he was mad that whoever called them wasn't answering.

He got closer, and I tensed and went still. Hork-Bajir eyes weren't very good in the dark, but their hearing was excellent. Just as he passed my position, I struck. Without warning I slashed my forearm blade across his throat and shot my other hand out to cover his mouth. The Hork-Bajir flailed and struggled, but I drove my blade in deep and held him tightly, praying that the Taxxon in the ship wouldn't notice the struggle.

I was panting a little a minute later as I finished shoving the Hork Bajir body into the pipe. Then I picked up the dracon beam that he'd dropped and fired it twice, disintegrating the body. I started back across the lit construction yard then, heading for the ship. I was completely exposed. If the Taxxon inside didn't buy that I was the same Hork-Bajir that he'd come down here with, I was about to be disintegrated by the ship weapons.

I didn't realize that I'd been holding my breath until I got up to the hatch. The weapons stayed silent, and the Taxxon appeared in the hatch. They were impossibly disgusting creatures, giant centipedes with multiple jelly eyes and a circular mouth of jagged teeth that let them devour anything in their path in an ever failing attempt to quench their massive appetite. The creature stared at me for a second, voicing a question that I didn't understand but could grasp the meaning of. I grunted and gestured back to where I'd shot the body, hoping he'd take the meaning that I'd destroyed the evidence that had been reported. The Taxxon slithered back into the ship with a mutter and I followed.

The hatch closed behind me, and then we lifted off as the Taxxon manipulated the controls.

The plan was working. The plan that I couldn't tell Jake about. I was on my way to infiltrating the Yeerk Mothership. It was insane, it was dangerous as anything we'd ever done, and I was going in without any back up.

And this was just part A.


	26. The Solution Chapter Five

Here we go, I was going to make this a Christmas gift on the 24th but... well, it didn't happen. So call it a New Years gift instead. Then you can tell your doctor that you're psychologically scarred because I never gave you anything for Christmas. :D Anyway, this chapter is extra long to make up for the delay.

Toe, I'm glad you like the story and the writing. And you're absolutely right, I use ellipses too much. I know I do and I've tried to cut back but eh, if that's my worst grammar problem I'm doing pretty good I guess. But I do know I use them more than I should to indicate trailing off.

Corellius, you have no idea how much your review made me smile. That was amazing to read. Thank you so much for telling me what you think of the story. You are exactly why I wanted to write this, to give at least a few people back the memories of animorphs from when we were younger and the new books were coming out.

Thank you all for reading. There should be four more chapters after this one to finish this story out, and then we'll go on to the next book.

Chapter Five

Silently, we approached the yeerk mother ship. My companion didn't seem confused by my silence, so I guess the yeerks didn't really chat that much. Or at least these two didn't. That or he knew exactly what was going on and I was walking into a trap. Either way, at least I was doing something. The whole time I had to hide the morphing cube. I had it clenched in my hand, covered by an old rag, and all I could do was pray that no one would pay much attention. Taking the morphing cube onto the yeerk mothership. How insanely stupid was I? But it had to be done. I couldn't just leave it somewhere.

As we drew within sight of the pool ship, I held myself still. I remembered seeing the ship before, when we had been captured back when Ax wanted to capture a bug fighter so he could go home. Back then we had escaped just because Visser 1 had wanted to make Visser 3 look incompetent. Now I had no such safety net.

The ship was massive, like a giant, three-legged bug. In the center there was a large sphere that was flat on the bottom, with strange tendrils, each at least a quarter of a mile long,drifting from it. The whole thing looked like an enormous space-faring jellyfish. There were also three legs spaced around the sphere that came up and then bent down again, like a spider's legs. Just the sight of it made me want to quiver in fear. Actually, it made me want to quickly take out my taxxon pilot and turn this thing around. But I had no way of being sure that I could land this ship, or even get away from the monstrosity ahead of us before they somehow pulled me in if I tried something like that. Besides, I had to do this. It was the only way to beat David. That much I was sure of.

Before I could wonder any more if this was a good idea, the wall opened at the docking port and we coasted inside. It was too late to turn back now, if it hadn't been already. I took a breath and muttered a grunt to the taxxon as the hatch opened. He started to clamber past but I elbowed him out of the way and barged off ahead of him. I figured it was what an impatient hork-bajir controller would do, and not at all what a scared andalite bandit trying to blend in would do.

The taxxon did nothing but voice his annoyance while I ignored him and walked off the bug fighter. I was in a large docking bay full of dozens of ships just like the one I had just left. Taxxons, Hork-Bajir, and the monkey-like gedd were all over the bay doing various jobs, but no one seemed to be paying any attention to me.

Of course, I had no idea how long that would last, so I had to move while I had the chance. Marco said once that adults tend to leave you alone if you look like you know what you're doing. I was hoping that philosophy would work here. With a shaky breath, I set off toward the nearest corridor.

I passed a set of Hork-Bajir wearing the red and black coloring of the visser's guard, and tried not to stiffen. They gave me a cursory look but said nothing, so I kept going. I just prayed that no one would order me to do something. I could only mumble and grunt my way through so many situations, unlike Marco whose entire life consisted of mumbling and grunting.

Down the corridor I trotted like I knew exactly where I was going. It was easy to find one of the open floor areas that looked just like a hole in the floor and ceiling that was actually the yeerk version of an elevator. I just stepped into empty space and started to fall, thinking hard at the elevator for which floor I wanted, the floor that Belle had said should have what I needed. Just like before when we were here, it worked. My fall slowed after a bit and finally stopped as I arrived.

It took about fifteen minutes to find my way to the area of the floor that I had Belle describe to me earlier. Luckily, one of the other Chee had spent extensive time on the pool ship and she was able to get the information I'd needed from him. I had to guess at how much time I had left in morph, since I couldn't exactly wear a watch in this form. As best as I could tell, I'd been in morph for about forty minutes. I'd give myself another hour before I had to demorph. If I couldn't do what I needed to do before then, it wasn't getting done.

The room I found was a large one, full of tubes and machinery. There were a couple humans in here, a man and a woman, who both looked suprised to see me. The male, a rather heavy set guy in his late fifty's, stood from where he had a strange device laid out on a table with various instruments that I could only guess were tools next to it. "What is the meaning of this?" He demanded, though his eyes glanced past me as though expecting to see back-up. Behind him, the woman winced and seemed to want to scrunch smaller into herself.

They both looked like a kids at school caught doing something wrong, so I took a chance. It was hard to roll the hork bajir tongue around correctly to do speech without a lot of practice, but it was possible. "Rrraahhthuthe Visser is norrg not waiting. Ghe wants iggght now." Of course I had no idea what 'it' was, but it was safe to assume they were working on something in here, and Visser 3 was incredibly impatient when he wanted something.

Their instant flinching at my words confirmed my guess. The man started to shake his head and stammer something when the woman put a hand on his shoulder. "We almost have it. Quite nearly, in fact. We just need a little more time."

Should I let them go and find what I needed here, or should I try to find out what exactly they were working on? I was limited in time, but there was always the chance I wouldn't even be able to locate what I wanted. After a brief hesitation, I lifted my hork-bajir head challengingly. "Show."

They both exchanged glances and I raised an arm threateningly, making them both frantically nod. I guess they were as afraid of Visser 3 as we were. While the man walked quickly to the back of the room, the woman led me behind him and began to explain. "The creatures are still nonfunctional in any environment other than one similar to their homeworld, and since we were forced to crossbreed their genetic material with humans in order to produce a viable living specimen, they won't be exactly the same as they once were." We arrived at a heavy metal door that looked like a vault, which the man opened while the female continued. "... but, as you can see, we are achieving wonderful results."

The room past the vault door looked like a large walk-in freezer. There were four tubes along the back wall with something inside each of them. As I walked closer, I could see that the creatures seemed to be shaped relatively human-like, but taller by a couple feet. Their heads looked like hammerhead-sharks with the eyes on either side of an oblong shape. They had one thick arm starting at the each shoulder which split at the elbow into two lower arms for a total of four.

"The Venber." The man spoke with an air of excitement. "We've brought them back from extinction." He spoke like a man who had just brought dinosaurs back to life. "Of course, they still can't survive outside of freezing conditions, but with these, the Visser will have his arctic-based army."

Arctic based army? A bunch of creatures who were worthless outside of the frozen north or south poles? What did Visser Three need with these guys? What possible use could he get out of them? It wasn't like when the yeerks manipulated sharks so they could have an ocean based army. There was nothing in the arctic that he could want, was there? I spent about three seconds wondering this before simply deciding that if it was something the Visser wanted, we didn't want him to have them. It was that simple. I didn't have to understand why he wanted them.

I only took a moment to think about what I was about to do before doing it. Without warning, while both scientists looked pleased with themselves, I swung a massive fist and decked the man. He was knocked cold to the floor and I had my hand around the woman's throat before she could scream. Her eyes went wide with shock as I thought-spoke to her. (Okay, yeerk, let's try it this way. I'm going to ask you a question, and you either answer me with the truth or I'll dig you out of this human's head and ask you directly. Got it?)

The woman's first instinct was to flinch away and gasp out. "Andalite!" She sneered at first. Then she seemed to realize the position she was in and quickly humbled herself, speaking quietly. "The Visser will kill you slowly and painfully for entering the mothership. You will--"

(The Visser isn't here.) I interrupted impatiently. (He's on Earth, and unless you want me to throw you out of the airlock so you can try to swim down there and tattle, you'll shut up and do what I tell you.)

She seemed to think this over for a bare second before nodding slowly. "What... do you want, Andalite?"

I told her exactly what I wanted. At first she denied everything, but it was easy to get the truth out of her. For all their world conquering strengths, the yeerks are cowards. That's why they can't understand why we fight so much. If they were in our positions, most of them would just surrender. So she caved, as I knew she would, and told me what I needed to know. Once she told me what I needed, I made her take me to the computer terminal and held my forearm blade against her throat while I told her to voice every command she gave it and that if I even thought she was calling for guards, she'd die first. Stiffly, the woman sent the commands to the computer, all except the final command to execute the orders. That part I was saving.

As soon as I had what I came for, I made the woman take me back to the vault and tell me how to open the tubes that held the creatures she called Venber. From what I could tell, these were their only viable specimen. Destroying them would set whatever project the yeerks had in the arctic back months, which might just make them abandon it completely. I hesitated though, with my hand on the controls while the woman watched me. The creatures, if what the yeerks said was true, were the very last of their kind. I wouldn't just be killing a couple beings, I would be in effect destroying a species. That was ridiculous of course, the Venber were already destroyed. These creatures were just mockeries engineered by yeerk science. And yet, I didn't move to open the tubes.

The woman was watching me carefully. Any moment now she'd get suspicious. An Andalite would destroy the creatures without a second thought. It was imperative that all the yeerks continue to think we were andalites. So why couldn't I order the tubes to open? I didn't even know these creatures. They were nothing.

"And yet, they're everything." The female voice came from behind me, a voice I instantly recognized.

I spun with her name in my mind, only to find myself looking at a taller, older woman. But it was definitely her. I cried out. "Cassie!" The words came from my suddenly human lips. I had demorphed! Only I didn't. I knew I didn't, and yet, I was human again. Instantly I whirled back toward the yeerk-human, only to find her frozen, staring at where I had been standing a moment before. Everything was frozen, even the bubbles in the tubes holding the Venber.

I knew what this was. I had encountered this before. Turning back, I scowled in anger. "Ellimist! Get out of my friend's form you sick son of a-"

She held her hands up quickly, placatingly. "Rachel! Rachel, it's me. It's me. It's Cassie. I promise." She smiled a little. "I'd tell you something only I'd know, but I figure you'd guess the Ellimist could find out too."

I took a breath, still furious but trying to understand what had just happened. "What's going on?" I demanded. "Why are you this old? What happened to you? What's happening!?"

So, she told me. She told me about the Ellimist and the Crayak, and about us winning the war until one of us made a deal to go back and change everything. She told me about her being the Ellimist's right-hand woman, like the creature she called the Drode. And she told me about David and what we'd originally done to make him hate us so much. She told me all of that, and yet I knew she was holding back some important information. Like which of us made the deal.

I was reeling, confused and angry. I couldn't stop to process everything she said, because the others needed me. "You're his big assistant now, so you must know what I'm going to do."

Cassie, who still seemed strange in her older form, nodded. "Yes, I know what your plan is." She paused and smiled slightly. "It's insane, Rachel, completely insane."

"Good." I said with a slight smile. "Because I was afraid I was losing my touch."

She returned my smile, and that was all I could take. Before I knew what I was doing, my arms were around her and I was hugging Cassie as hard as I could. "Cass..." My voice choked and I held her tighter. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't help you."

Without hesitation, or confusion, she returned my hug. She knew what I meant, that I was talking about the Cassie that David had taken. "Oh Rachel, you couldn't do anything. It's okay."

"No." I said, my voice tight. "It's not okay. It'll never be okay. David, he took you. He absorbed you. How... How can we help you? Please, tell me how to save you. You know I have to know right now."

Cassie held me tighter, and I felt her own sadness. Of course it wasn't actually her that was in David, but it still was, in a way. "I don't think you can. I think it's permanant."

That made tears spring up no matter how hard I struggled to keep them away. "No!" I shouted, feeling like a child as I shoved away from her, blinking rapidly to clear my blurry vision. "There has to be a way! There is! I won't do... that. I won't let him keep you!"

Her hands were on my shoulders then as she stared at me pleadingly. "Rachel! You have to! Do you have any idea what David is capable of now? Do you have any clue what he'll do? You have to stop him, and this is the only way."

I argued weakly a little more, but I knew she was right. David had to be stopped and that mattered more than anything, even the faint hope that we could somehow save our Cassie from him. "I'm sorry..." I repeated as much as I could. "I'm sorry, Cassie. I'm so sorry."

"I know..." She said gently, looking sad as she watched my eyes fill up once more. "Rachel... you have to finish this. I'll take care of the Venber. They can go back to the planet they originated from. The yeerks won't be able to use them." She smiled a little at that. "Which I guess means we won't be eating seal anytime soon." Before I could ask what she meant, she shook it off. "Never mind, let me take care of this. You do what you came to do."

I hesitated before hugging her one more time. "I'll see you after this. Promise me."

She nodded firmly. "I promise, Rachel. Either way, I'll see you when it's over." She raised a hand and time went back to normal. The yeerk-controller lay on the ground, fast asleep. It was time to go.

I walked straight to another vault door, the one I'd made the woman tell me about. Cassie followed, watching me. She couldn't interfere much, she'd told me, but she could open doors for me. A moment after I reached it, the door slid open. I gave her a weak smile and stepped through. "Well..." I said upon finding the contents. "At least I know the yeerk wasn't lying. Now I just hope Belle did her part."

Cassie's eyes drifted closed and then she nodded. "She did. She's lured David back to the resort. They're just outside the field. Apparently he thinks she has the morphing cube." Her eyes focused on the cube in my hand, wrapped in its rags.

I smiled briefly. "Yeah, which is part of why I couldn't leave it with her. If he cornered her, she'd have to give it up. She couldn't fight him." I paused and then looked back into the vault cage. "All right, I guess it's time. I was going to try to steal a ship and fly it, but can you..."

She nodded once more. "If the field is down, I won't be interfering too much by transferring you there."

I hesitated, wanting to hug her again, wanting to say something else. But there was nothing to say. I met her gaze for a long moment before pressing my hand to the edge of the field that held the most important part of the plan. I gave the order to lower the field and release the contents in one minute before leaving the vault to head for the main computer terminal in the lab itself. After reaching it and laying my hand on it while I watched her, I sent the execute command for the orders I'd made the yeerk give earlier. Immediately alarms began to blare all over the ship. They were panicking because all the ships power was gone. Of course it wasn't really. The security system was way too advanced for even the scientist-yeerk to override. But what she had been able to do, at my insistance, is plant a command that would make the ship computer believe that the power was completely gone. So it began to drain all the power from every source it could find, which included the ship on earth that it had been feeding power to in order to fuel the shield around the resort. They'd fix it fairly quickly of course, but for now, the shield ship couldn't maintain the energy needed, so the field was down.

"All right!" I said to Cassie quickly. "You can send m--" Before I could finish, in the space between a blink, I was suddenly standing in one of the resort rooms. I rolled my eyes and yelled despite myself. "Now don't you start that crap too! You can wait for me to finish a sentence."

Five sets of eyes, one containing four instead of two, whirled to stare at me. Tobias was the first to speak. (Rachel!) He was perched on a dresser, staring intently at me. (You're okay! How did you...) He trailed off. (Cassie.)

I nodded to him and to the others. "Quick, what have you guys been doing? We're about to have company."

"Company?" Jake looked confused, and as tired as I ever remembered seeing him. "We've been trying to find a way to figure out which one of the leaders is a controller so we can approach the other ones. Tobias has been trailing Visser 3 to keep David away from him in case he comes back."

(Our efforts have been mostly in vain.) Ax added. (We have not been able to determine the identity of the human leader who is a slave of the yeerks and David has not returned.)

"Well he's about to come back real quick." To add to their confusion, I smiled. "This is gonna be fun."

"Oh god, I hate that smile." Marco moaned. "I hate it when she says something's going to be fun. She's insane, Jake. She's completely out of her mind. Please tell her to stop it. Tell her we don't want to die. Tell her I don't want to die."

"I thought she was insane when she wanted to do a round off back handspring when we were nine." Melissa said quietly. "This is kind of past that."

"Relax, Marco, Melissa." I kept smiling, even though I was nervous. "I don't--"

That was as far as I got before the door flew open. We all whirled around to find Belle standing in front of us. "It's okay!" I said quickly. "It's Belle. She's one of the Chee. She's leading David here."

Melissa's hand went to her mouth in surprise, and Jake did a hilarious double-take back at me while even Ax looked startled. Tobias just stayed silent. I guess he trusted me. Or he was so shocked he couldn't find words. Jake spoke for all of them. "Say what?"

Marco's eyes went wide. "See?! I told you she was insane? What do you mean, leading him here? Why would you do that?"

"Because..." I said simply. "We have to stop him."

"Oh?" The voice came from the doorway, and we turned to find David there, glaring at us. "And how do you think you're going to do that, Xena?" He stepped inside, staring intently at me. "I almost killed you before, you little bitch. What do you think everyone being all together is gonna change, huh?"

Jake stepped between us, his gaze even on David. "Guys, battle morphs."

David laughed. "I'll kill you all before you even finish morphing. You lose, 'Prince' Jake! You can't even morph before I finish your pathetic little band. Some big important heroes." He sneered, and I could see the fur start to appear on Jake's arm.

I stepped forward quickly, putting a hand on Jake's shoulder. "No, he's right. He could out morph us anytime, any day."

The psychotic boy met my gaze suspiciously. "Yeah, so what? What's your plan, little Rachel? Are you hoping I'll spare you if you flatter me?" He raised a hand, instantly morphing it into a sharp blade which he cut the air with before shifting it into a crab's pincer. "You're stalling. There's nothing you can do, so stop it. Why are you stalling?!"

I just smiled sweetly back at him. "I'm waiting for reinforcements, David." Even the others looked confused by those words. Belle just stood out of the way.

David looked momentarily put off, and then angry. "Huh? What do you... there aren't any more reinforcements, you moron! You're all here! You got every last one of your little band gathered here, and even if you weren't it wouldn't matter! It wouldn't matter if there were fifty of you. I can outmorph all of you! I'm stronger than you, smarter than you, and my morphing power is stronger than all of you together!"

"Actually, I was kind of counting on that." I replied coolly.

His brow furrowed in confusion, just as a horrible buzzing sound tore everyone's gaze to the ceiling. An instant later it was ripped away, torn through like paper as the horrible spinning tornado plunged into the room. David screamed and raised his hands just as the thing set upon him.

I raised my voice to a shout. "David!" The smile came then. "I think the Veleek would like to have a word with you!"


	27. The Solution Chapter Six

Glad everyone likes the Veleek part of the plan. Awesome, and yes, I do like to stick to continuity, so I hope I don't screw anything major up in that front. Now here's hoping Rachel actually knows what she's doing. So without stretching it out too much, here's the next part, guys. Three more chapters after this one to wrap up this trilogy, and we'll see how it goes.

Chapter Six

It was a viciously gruesome sight. The Veleek tore into David in a whirlwind fury. As the boy threw a gorilla shaped fist into the cloud of death, it was instantly sheared away, leaving him staring blankly at a bloody stump before quickly reforming it. David grew larger as a set of scales emerged to cover his hide, becoming a strange sort of bipedal crocodile. The scales flickered and then turned reflective, like armor. He snapped at the tornado and lost part of his snout for it, howling in agony as he stumbled back, reforming himself into an even larger type of bull. (Arggghh, what is this thing?! What did you do?! You crazy little bitch!)

As the Veleek attacked the bull, trying to engulf it while David continued to frantically morph, searching for a form powerful enough to break the tornado, I heard a high pitched scream. "It's okay, Melissa. I sort of know what I'm doing!" I shouted over the noise.

The scream continued as Melissa responded with a shaky yell. "It's not me!" Sure enough, though she was wide eyed in fear and confusion, the scream wasn't coming from her.

I cast a quick glance over and rolled my eyes. "Oh, shut up, Marco."

"No!" He shouted back at me. "You're insane! I knew you were insane, but this is INSANELY insane! Did I mention insane!? Where did you find that thing!? I thought it was destroyed!"

"Argue later!" Jake's firm voice rose above our yelling and the vortex of destruction. "Damage control, we can't let the security guards get involved in this. They'll be torn apart. Melissa, Marco, Tobias, keep them out of here!" Marco and Melissa ran to the door while Tobias swooped down between them. I didn't have time to wonder how they were going to accomplish that. Jake gave me a look. "I hope your plan didn't consist entirely of get the Veleek here and let them solve it Godzilla versus Mothra style."

"That's most of it." I admitted before adding quickly. "But it won't work if Mothra bails!" David had already decided he couldn't beat this thing, so he was fighting his way free of its grasp and breaking for the window to escape. He'd gone through several new forms, each one being torn to shreds. Right now he was rapidly morphing what looked like a massive red lion with long patches of blood running down his side. As powerful as the creature was though, it was useless against the Veleek. David obviously realized this, because he ran for the window as soon as he was on all fours once more. As soon as he was in open land, he'd disappear. I had no doubt that whatever form he'd assume could escape if he got free of the closed room. .

Jake yelled for Ax to stop him while starting his own morph quickly. I knew it wouldn't be quick enough. It was up to Ax, who sprang forward on deceptively dainty looking hooves. His tail flashed once, twice, three times! Both of David's front legs were gone, sending him crashing to the floor. He'd be up in a second, but by then it would be too late. The Veleek would have him!

Except it didn't, because the Veleek was suddenly focused on Jake. I realized the problem immediately. David hadn't morphed anything in a few moments and the Veleek had zeroed in on Jake morphing his tiger. I abandoned my own initial attempt to morph and threw myself into the half-morphed Jake. We fell in a sprawling heap while the tornado eradicated the television and desk, as well as part of the wall into the next room over. It was so close that I could feel the blades tear through by my back, drawing long lines of blood.

We hit the floor, crashing into the other wall with a dull thud. We were a jumble of tangled limbs, fighting to get free of each other before the Veleek ripped into us. I braced for the deadly embrace of the swirling blades, but it didn't come. Finally, I managed to roll onto my back. From there I could see Ax standing between David and the window. They both tensed, even as the Veleek came at them. David had fixed his legs and that drew the monster back to him. He had to make a move, but Ax could slow him long enough for the Veleek to get there. However, David had realized he didn't need to go through the window. His legs bunched as he prepared to leap through the hole that the Veleek had created when it crashed into the room.

There wasn't time to morph, or David would be gone. We'd never get him trapped this well again. If he escaped, none of us, or our families, would be safe. David was taking a running start to escape through the hole when I scrambled to my feet. He needed three steps to clear the hole. One step, and I was on my feet. Two steps, and I was hurling my frail human body at the enormous lion. On his third step, as he braced himself to lunge to freedom, I collided into David's side with all my strength. It was like hitting a brick wall, and he barely missed his last step. I grasped for his mane, hauling back hard on it as I threw myself haphazardly onto his back and jerked up and back violently, like a cowboy trying to halt a horse with the reins.

Suddenly I was holding air as David morphed himself around so that his head was facing me. His body was oriented the other way so there was nothing under me except floor, which I I fell to with a crash. Honestly, if he'd finished his escape right then, as Jake fought to pick himself up and with Ax too far away, he would have made it. But I was prone on the floor, and he couldn't resist the target. His head loomed over me even as the Veleek came at him. (Rachel.) He started to gloat. (Your sister--)

I didn't give him the chance. Bracing myself on my back, I kicked up as hard as I could with both feet, colliding with his snout. His head jerked up, straight into the embrace of the whirling cloud that was the Veleek. (Arrgggggghhhhh!!) His scream was beautiful music, until I was hauled straight up with him by the feet, jerked off the floor as the Veleek grabbed me. Each of the millions of tiny creatures that made up the monster swirled around us, slicing easily through my skin. My scream joined his as long gashes cut through my legs, arms, and even through my shoulder straight down to the middle of my back. Life was agony, and nothing existed but the next cut.

I would have died. I had no doubt about that. If I'd been drawn into that beast alone, I'd be dead. But I was just an incidental capture. The Veleek's focus was on David, who was constantly morphing as he screamed and howled. He was a dog and then a man, then a great lizard, then a massive bird with a two thickly muscled club tails. Every form he assumed was torn through in seconds, but his swift changes worked to shelter me just enough that I survived. Survived, but with hundreds, maybe thousands of cuts all over my body. I'd bleed out in minutes, even if the Veleek didn't shred me first. My entire body was on fire, as I nearly tore my throat out in a scream that matched David's.

One thing, and only one thing stopped me from morphing. If I morphed, the creature would focus on me. If that happened, David would escape. So I took the pain. I took the cuts and screamed, my vision so drenched with blood that I couldn't even see. He was morphing over and over again. I could feel the shifts as the Veleek compensated for each form. I was cut again, and again, this time through my forearm straight down to the bone. Nothing existed but agony, and anger. I ignored the first and embraced the latter as I never had before. Even through the pain, even through the terror, I forced myself to reach out. The Veleek tore my pinkie finger away. It was there one second and gone the next, as though it never existed. The only evidence of its passing being the small gushing wound that joined all the other wounds. I was dizzy, losing my mind, but I focused on that anger and reached. My hand caught hold of David's hair, and I hauled myself against him. It took a shattering amount of effort, but I managed to lock my arm around his throat. I had no strength, none at all, and yet I somehow managed to hold on. I clenched tighter against his throat, clinging desperately, as hard as I had ever clung to anything in my life. David, in his panic, couldn't stop me. He couldn't morph away, because he was being assaulted, savaged on every side by the deadly creature that held him in its hellish grip.

Somehow I found my voice, screaming in David's ear. "Try breathing now, you son of a bitch!" I tightened my grip on him, praying he'd go for it. He had to go for it. I couldn't hold on. I had to hold on. My grip was failing, but I couldn't fail. I was slipping. He had to take it. He had to take the bait. "Take it!" I screamed, belatedly realizing if he had the slightest idea what I meant, he'd never do it. I was dizzy, losing grip on reality. My vision was gone. Nothing made sense any more. Where was I? What was I doing? Dimly I heard screaming and realized it was my own. I had no thoughts anymore. Nothing existed, except holding to David's throat as he choked.

Then his skin hardened, turning metalic. I was clinging to a robot, who had no need of air. David had morphed the Chee. How it was possible, I had no idea. All I knew was he was suddenly invincible.

Just like I wanted.

Somehow, with a strength that seemed to belong not to me, but to some mythical creature that the others seem to think I am, I managed to scream above the roar of the Veleek. "NOWWWWW!!!"

And then the Veleek was gone, dropping both of us. I fell to the floor in a bloody heap. I could see Belle holding the blue box in her hand. It glowed, its activation drawing the Veleek away, to the ultimate source of morphing energy. Belle cocked her arm back and threw as hard as she could. The cube sailed up and into the sky. The Veleek was on it an instant later, engulfing the cube before swirling away with it. It disappeared through the atmosphere seconds later. It was free. Visser Three's scientists hadn't gotten around to retraining the creature to bring the morphing energy back yet after they had to scavenge the thing off the bottom of the ocean and practically bring it back to life. They'd given it the hunger for the morphing energy but that was it. With the cube, it could disappear into space, far away from any of this, and never need to return. It had all the energy it would ever need.

Jake was at my side an instant later. "Rachel!" He looked mortified, afraid to touch me. "Rachel you have to morph! Morph something, anything! You have to morph away... you'll heal... come on..."

"Not... yet..." I pushed my head up, every movement pure agony. There was almost nothing left of my morphing outfit. My hair, previously perfectly cut, was nearly sheared off. There wasn't a full inch of skin on me that wasn't bleeding through some cut or gash. But I saw David, and smiled.

Jake followed my gaze and stood. "David..." His fists were clenched.

David looked at his metal hands and then up again. He seemed to smile, but he hadn't figure dout how to use the hologram yet, so he was just a blank faced slightly canine looking robot. "Hey, Jake. Look at this, neat trick huh? Sorry your precious plan didn't work, but--" He cut himself off, lunging forward with his fist raised to deck Jake with the strength of a dozen hork bajir.

The blow never landed. David's fist stopped an inch before Jake's nose. Even David, with his expressionless metal face, looked startled. "Huh?!"

"Sorry, David..." I groaned out and pushed myself up. No matter how much it hurt, no matter how badly it killed me, I was going to be standing for this. "The plan... didn't fail. You can't hurt us. See with all that... uggn... with all that power, you get a real great price. Pacifism. You could rip us apart, but see, you really can't." I managed a laugh, then whimpered in pain before gritting my teeth. "You sick... demented... creep. You can't fight."

The fury rolled off of David in waves, but he wasn't afraid, not yet. "Fine then. I'll just--" He stopped, and if a robot could look confused, he would. "Morph. I can't... why can't I morph!?"

This time the laugh didn't hurt one bit. In fact, it felt pretty good. "That's the Chee programming. You morph, the chee programming knows you'll hurt someone. So it won't let you. This is you, David. This is you for the rest of your life. You'll never hurt anyone again."

I paused, trembling in agony, exhaustion, and utter reckless victory. "You lose."


	28. The Solution Chapter Seven

Hey guys, I've got a new chapter for you now. Here's a few review answers.

Mickiept: The next book will involve Loren. I can tell you that much. I always felt they rushed her development at the very end and then ignored her because they couldn't think of anything for her to do. I hope to do better than that.

Meiza: Hey thanks, I'm glad you like the wrap up with the morphing cube too. And once I thought of the Veleek getting its 'happy ending', I had to go with it. Glad other people enjoyed that.

Belle: LOL, if I was nearly as good as KA, you'd think I'd go get paid for it. But thanks a lot, it's awesome for you to give me that kind of compliment. I'm glad you like the series, and I hope you keep liking it, even as I press your cliffhanger torture buttons.

Niori: I don't think David would be happy no matter what form he's in, even human. He's an unhappy little guy.

Ahilty: All I can say is read the new chapter. Then come back and hit me for being a sonofabitch.

Anyway, here's the next chapter, also titled 'The Drode is an evil bastard', also titled 'I'm a cliffhangering asshole'

Chapter Seven

In the end, it was hard to say who was more surprised, David or Jake. Both of them stood staring at me in silence for several seconds. I think the shock made their brains shut down simultaneously. That was okay, I was content to lean on the wall and bleed. I would have morphed so I could heal, but honestly, just the thought of morphing was enough to make me whimper. I was beat. No, scratch that. I was cut, bleeding, bent, bruised, and half dead, but David was the one who was beat. And the thought of his shock at how he'd been played supported me, gave me just enough strength to smirk at him. "It's not so... fun now.... huh...?"

I honestly think that if the Chee programming wasn't holding him back, David would have lashed out and killed me then. He raised both fists and held them there impotently, while I just stared evenly back at him. Our gazes met and I could feel his hatred rolling over me. That was okay, I hated him too. If I lost Jordan and Cassie, he'd see just how much.

Ax was the first to recover, walking over to stand between us. He kept his stalk eyes on David while looking to me. (You planned on David becoming trapped in the Chee morph where he would be unable to harm another?) There was a slight pause, and then he smiled in that way andalites have with their eyes. (Very good.)

"Rachel..." Jake had found his voice, turning back to me. "That was insane. Do you have any idea how... utterly... and completely... "

"Jake, I think I'm... aware of how... insane... it was." I took one step and then lost my footing and fell into Jake's arms. I managed to scowl at him for that. "If you tell Marco you had... to catch me... I will.... call that Veleek back here... I swear." It was hard to talk, and my vision kept getting darker as it became harder to focus.

"Don't worry, we'll get the--" Jake cut himself off, staring at me. "Rachel? Morph, okay? You've gotta morph now. It's over. You can morph. Rachel? Rachel!" I could hear his worry, and felt bad about whoever he was yelling at. I tried to tell him to chill out, to stop sounding so scared, but right then all I could do was drift off. A nap sounded good. I'd just take a little nap and then tell Jake to cool it and quit yelling over every little thing.

I think I dreamt after that. There was a spaceship, and Tom was there. I think there was a polar bear too, and I was supposed to do something. But what I was supposed to do didn't make any sense. It was a jumble in my head and nothing could straighten it. I was alone. Why was I alone? Why would I be so empty? It didn't make sense. I had Tobias, and Jake, and Cassie... but... did I have Cassie? No, she was gone. I'd trapped David in the Chee form. What chance was there that I would ever see my best friend again? I wanted to cry, but it didn't matter, because I was gone too. Wasn't I? Why was there a polar bear?

Someone was shaking my shoulder. I sat up with a start and swung my fist. I felt it connect with something and heard a loud yelp. Then I blinked as Marco fell back with his hand over his nose. "Owww, by node!" He squinted away from me, taking his hand from his face. "That's why you wanted me to wake her up." He was glaring at Jake, who shrugged innocently.

"What happened? What's going on?" I straightened up, confused to find that we were on the beach a short distance from the resort. My skin was clear. The cuts were gone, and even though I was exhausted, I felt pretty good all things considered. A loud roar made me look to see a helicopter soaring over the resort itself, running a spotlight over the hole the Veleek had created.

Tobias, who had been sitting on a log, flapped over to land next to my knee. He turned his raptor gaze up, seeming to stare through me. (Rachel, are you all right?) None of the others reacted, so I could tell that he had spoken only to me. In response, I put a hand on the back of his head softly.

Jake answered my question. "We're pretty sure the summit is cancelled. If half the building being torn in half wasn't enough, Marco, Tobias, and Melissa had a little too much fun with the security.

Melissa humphed. "It's not our fault they tried to taser a hippopotamus."

Folding his arms, Jake gave them his best exasperated look. "So whose fault is it that there was a hippo in the first place? You guys realize when I said keep them away, I meant like, pull a fire alarm or turn into dogs and bark at them?"

"Next time make the panicky leader instructions more specific." Marco replied coolly "Say, 'Go distract the menacing policemen with anything except a hippo'. And besides, I mean if you didn't want a hippo, you shouldn't have let her get a hippo morph. You were asking for hippos."

Jake raised an eyebrow. "Are you done saying hippo?"

"That depends, do you have a funnier word for me to say?" Marco asked with a straight face.

Losing the resulting staring match, Jake coughed and looked back to me. "We got out of there. Your new friend carried David." His gaze moved off to the side, and I saw the blank android body that was David standing next to Belle. They were faced away from us. Jake added quietly. "We think they're talking about what's going to happen to him. She did something to his programming and he's sort of frozen for now."

"He wants to know what's going to happen to him?" I was on my feet then, my anger renewed along with my flesh. "I'll tell him exactly what's going to happen. We're going to find the nearest smelting plant and..." I cut myself off as my eyes went wide. "Jordan. Jordan!" Already I was starting to morph. I had to get back to the hospital. I had to find out what happened to my sister. I had to know.

"Rachel, wait." Jake's hand was on my arm, even as the familiar feather patterns formed over the skin. "I want to get there too, but you can't go like this." He gestured, and I realized that I was still in my all but destroyed morphing outfit. If any more of it was missing, I would have had to die of embarrassment.

"I don't care!" I retorted, resuming the morph. "I have to get there."

(You will.) This time it was Tobias who spoke. (The Chee girl said she has a car. She's going to drive you and Jake to the hospital. Meanwhile, the rest of us will fly ahead and find some clothes for you.)

I guess the fact that Marco didn't make a joke about my trusting Tobias and him to find clothes for me proved the situation was pretty bad. It also made me, irrationally, want to slap him for not doing it. I looked away and then stepped to Belle. "We're leaving. Now." I kept my gaze rigidly on her. I couldn't even look at David. I couldn't think about him, or I'd lose it and start choking an android.

She simply nodded. "Of course. David is evaluating his current circumstances in a sealed environment. I shut down his motor and speech capabilities. We'll put him in the trunk and go to the hospital."

The others stayed behind to morph while Jake, Belle, and I made our way to the car parked at the edge of the beach. She carried David, who was as rigid as a mannequin. I couldn't help smiling a little as he was shut away in the trunk like a forgotten boot.

It took a few minutes to get to the hospital, and I sat rigid the entire time. Jake tried once or twice to talk to me about what had happened, but I couldn't get myself to respond. All I could do was grip the seat and wait. I wanted to scream for her to go faster at the same time as I wanted to tell her to turn away and drive somewhere else, anywhere that I wouldn't have to hear bad news. As long as I didn't know for sure, Jordan could still be okay.

Eventually we parked and waited an agonizing couple of minutes before Marco and Melissa found us. They had a couple pairs of stupid beach shorts and flip flops as well as tee shirts from a dinosaur museum down the street. I didn't care. After hurriedly tossing on the clothes, the four of us went inside, leaving Belle in the parking garage to wait. I almost walked right past the tall pretty boy and the scraggly haired blonde guy by the doors before realizing it was Ax and Tobias, both in their human morphs. Ax had gained his human form by combining parts of Jake, Marco, Cassie, and me. The effect was a very pretty guy.

Halfway down the hall, I felt fingers grasp mine and looked to see Melissa smile slightly at me. She had shown more life since we told her the truth than she had in the last year or so. She finally had a way of fighting back. She knew what was wrong with her parents, and even if she couldn't actively help them, she was doing something towards that. I returned her silent hand squeeze before letting go as we reached the waiting room.

Jake and I continued on while the others peeled off to wait. They would wait here as long as it took, even if some of them had to visit the bathroom every couple hours. At the last second, I felt Tobias touch my back. I turned, but he didn't say anything. He just gave me a probing look that could have been his way of telling me silently that he'd be there regardless of what happened, or it could have been his normal way of looking at people since he's been a hawk for so long he forgot how to make facial expressions. I chose to believe it was the former.

I wish I could say that there was a miraculous movie ending. I want so badly to say that we found mom and dad and Jordan and Sara bouncing on the bed like idiot hobbits over the last minute recovery. I want to, but I can't. As Jake and I neared that room, his mother stepped out and froze upon seeing us. My father was right behind him, and one look at his face told me what I needed to know.

The next few minutes were a blur. I spun away, intending to run, but Jake caught me. I fought him, beat against his chest and screamed for him to let me go, but he held tight. Then I felt arms pull me back and my dad had me. He was on his knees, holding me tight against his chest. Even now, I don't know how he had the strength to put his arms around me, but he managed it. He held me and together we almost fell to the floor. I felt tears on my cheek and realized they were my own, and his as well, as he laid his head against mine.

I wanted to be angry. I wanted to lose myself in fury, because then I wouldn't have to feel empty. I hate feeling weak, and sadness, to me, has always felt like weakness. All I wanted to do was get angry and attack David, but right then, there was no anger in me. There was nothing in me. My sister was gone, and nothing would ever bring her back.

"Except, what if something could?"

The words were spoken aloud, but it took me a few moments to realize I hadn't just thought them. My dad's grip had gone lax and I hitched my breath a few times before drawing my hand back over my eyes as I slowly pulled back in confusion. Jake was frozen in mid motion of moving both hands back through his hair as his mother's hand touched his shoulder. It took me a minute to find my voice, which cracked partway through. "C-Cassie...?"

A creature stepped into view, a creature that I'd never seen before yet instinctively hated. It as tall, vaguely dinosaur shaped, with purple skin and a human face. It was disgusting, and vile in a way far beyond simple appearance. It reeked of evil. "Don't insult me. It's your old friend, the Drode."

"What--" I couldn't make myself speak anymore. I didn't even care. Covering my mouth with my hand as I retched, almost throwing up from the thought of Jordan, I shook my head, managing a weak protest. "Go away."

"Ah. But you don't want me to do that." The Drode thing smiled, and continued while I folded my arms around myself and shuddered. "Because then you don't get to hear the deal."

I didn't respond. My head was down as I cried. I didn't care what the thing wanted. I didn't care who he worked for. I didn't care about anything just then. Somehow I managed to mumble something that made the creature continue. "Of course, if you're not interested in the life of your sister."

That made me look up, catching my breath. My voice cracked once more. "Wh-What? What did you say?"

The Drode raised its arms graciously. "You have done my Master Crayak a great service. You allowed him to test his new servant. He was found lacking of course, but still, a test is a test. For that, he offers you a reward."

I spoke hesitantly, raising a hand to my mouth in disbelief. "He... you... you want to bring Jordan back."

"Oh hell no." The Drode responded flatly. "I don't want to. But we pay our debts." There was a hint of mockery of in voice that grew more pronounced as he went on. "Here's the thing..." He trailed off, and when he caught my gaze, he continued. "You've got a sister that needs help, and a bestest best friend." My breath caught as I realized what he was saying, and my stricken look made him smile openly. "Cassie or Jordan, Rachel. Which one do you want to make the deal with the devil to save?"


	29. The Solution Chapter Eight

All right, this is the FINAL chapter of this trilogy. It's been incredible to write this entire thing, and it's the first thing I've written that I've actually finished. I've made some changes to my overall plan along the way, but for the most part, this is how I pictured it in the beginning. Thank you guys for every single comment you make. I hope you enjoy this finale, and I will be back with Tobias in a new story, which I will call Redux: The Pretender.

I'm glad you guys enjoyed reading this trilogy. I hope I met some of your expectations, and I'll see you next time. Peace.

Chapter Eight

There were no words for the feeling that came over me then. It wasn't anger. It wasn't grief. It wasn't even horror. I felt all those things, but there was something else, a nameless emotion that was so much more than any of them. My voice shook as I said. "You can't tell me to choose between my sister and my best friend."

The Drode heaved a sigh like he was disappointed before speaking in a bored tone. "Really? Let's see." He slowly enunciated each word. "You will choose between your sister and your best friend." In mock surprise, he lifted his arms. "Well what do you know, I actually can say it. You humans are so silly."

I was on my feet without realizing how I'd gotten there. Anger propelled me. It was familiar, almost comforting. Not like this alien sickness, this grief that had coiled up inside my stomach and rooted like a creature that fed on guilt and anguish. "You piece of--you...." Words spun through my head, but nothing fit. I was so through being used by these people. "You could bring them both back! Bring them back! What do you gain from this? What do you get?!" I shouted the last, flailing my arms up in emphasis. "What do you get out of this?!"

"You mean besides seeing you agonize over it?" The Drode retorted with a sly smile. "Oh but it's much more than that. Much more." He raised one hand with a finger extended, then the other hand the same way, as though weighing them. "Do you put the life of your sister, dear innocent Jordan, taken before her time, first. Or.." He raised the other hand higher. "Do you give the Animorphs back their heart, the Ma-Ti to your Linka? Which is more important, family or saving the world? Would you hurt the earth's chances by losing one of your tragically small band? Would you condemn your own flesh and blood to death? Would you let your best friend rot? Would you look at your grieving mother every day and know that you could have saved her little girl?"

"Shut up, just shut up!" I shouted at him, raising my hands to cover my ears. I couldn't hear anymore. He was right. No matter what I chose I would be betraying someone. My sister was dead. My best friend was gone. I could save one of them, but only one. How could I decide something like that? I couldn't just say who lived and who died.

Save Jordan, or save Cassie? It was an impossible question. I felt sick, like I was going to break down completely. I clutched the wall with one hand and opened my mouth to plead with the creature not to make me choose. If he'd bring them both back, I'd give my life for the second one. I'd do anything, even, as evil as the being was, beg him. To save the life of Jordan and Cassie, I would forget my pride, and beg this creature to do what he could do with a flick a finger.

Then, I heard a voice. It spoke only four words, but with those four words, I knew what choice I had to make. The voice said. "Free or dead, Rachel."

Free or dead. The phrase that not so long ago, had defined the choice we'd made to help save the only pair of free hork-bajir in the entire galaxy. When we weren't sure if we should reveal our true identities to them, for fear that they could be reinfested and our secret would be lost, they had responded with those words. Both of them would have died before they allowed themselves to be taken by the yeerks once again. They would be free or they would die, but they would not be slaves.

With those words in my head, I closed my eyes. Unlike what many movies would have you believe, coming to a decision did not ease my guilt. It didn't make me feel any better. Actually, I felt worse. But unlike any other decision I could have made, I knew this was the right one, if there was such a thing as right in this situation. But it was still the hardest thing I have ever done.

Raising my head, blinking through bleary eyes at the creature who stared back at me impatiently, I answered. "Neither."

The only hint of satisfaction I felt was the look of confusion on the Drode's face, and even that was a hollow, painful feeling. He opened his mouth and shut it again, like he couldn't think of what to say before speaking. "Wait, what? What did you say?"

Taking my hand off the wall, I stepped toward him. My legs were shaking so badly I was about to fall down. My hands shook as well, and my voice broke when I tried to speak. "I s-said, neither." My anger at what they were trying to do to me, to us, gave me a little strength and I raised a hand to point to the Drode. "I choose neither. You... you aren't going to get your filthy claws into Cassie or Jordan. If I let you..." I almost lost it then, tears swimming up before I forced them down and caught my breath. "If I let you bring one of them back, we'll owe you. They'll owe you. If they owe you, then you own them. You own us. Free or..." I couldn't speak for several moments, and this time the tears came fully. "Free or dead."

I clenched my pointing hand back into a fist. "I love my sister. I love Cassie. I.. won't let my grief let you buy either of them. I won't sell our souls so you can have something over us. I love them. I miss them. I--" My voice caught again, but I forced myself to go on past the lump in my throat. "I won't betray them just so I don't have to feel bad." My jaw was so tight it hurt, and my voice shook uncontrollably as the tears fell, blinding me. "Now get out of here, you son of a bitch."

The next thing I knew, the Drode was gone and my dad and Jake were holding onto me once more. I raised my head to look around. My eyes found her. Cassie, the older Cassie, was standing at the end of the hall. Moments earlier, she had said the words that let me decide what to do. Once again, she'd known exactly what to say. She smiled and raised a hand. I heard her voice even though her mouth didn't move. "I love you, Rachel. You did the right thing. Be careful. I'll see you again, but it's going to be dangerous." My tears blinded me briefly then, and when I blinked them away, she was gone. I choked a little before clutching my dad tighter and turning back to him. For my sister, and for my best friend, I grieved.

---------------------------------------------------

Two weeks after all of this happened, life went on. Obviously they had cancelled the summitt completely. The yeerks were out of luck. the six of us were walking along the beach. Jake and Marco were talking about some assignment Marco was ignoring, as usual. Melissa was hanging a little back, near the water. I was walking ahead of the others, thinking about life. Ax was in his human morph, and Tobias flew overhead, complaining about the mobs of seagulls.

(I'm telling you, people think telemarketers are annoying? Try dealing with these flying rats getting in your face. Hey! Yeah, I'm talking about you, birdy.) He was flying low enough that we could talk to him, hopefully without attracting any attention from wandering bird watchers. But this put him down near where the gulls flocked.

Ax frowned, an expression he's picked up from us. "I do not believe that these birds-urds-suh have any relation-lation-ation-tiontiontion--"

He was interrupted by Marco, who slapped him on the back like he was a skipping record player. "It's a figure of speech, dude. He knows they're not really rats."

Overhead, Tobias disagreed. (They're vermin, they get into everything, they don't serve any sort of purpose. They sound like rats to me.) As a hawk, Tobias can be a bit of an elitist when it comes to other birds. Sometimes it makes me feel bad, that he's this at home with his new life. He has the power to become human again, and to stay that way. But if he did, he'd be out of the fight. He couldn't help us, and he wants to help. This is as much his fight as anyone else's. He's earned that much.

We haven't seen Cassie since that last day. I never told the others about the choice I made. Half of me didn't want to burden them with that knowledge, and the other half was afraid of what they'd think of me. I had doomed Cassie with my choice, and even if it still seemed right to me, it didn't make me feel any better.

Her parents thought she was missing. They had her picture up everywhere, and search teams kept combing the woods. It nearly killed Jake and me to actually help them look, like they had a chance of finding her. But we couldn't let on that we knew otherwise. We had to go through the motions. But it was almost over. The search wasn't going to turn up everything, and then we would grieve openly as we had been doing privately for all this time. I could see the haunted look in Jake's eyes whenever Cassie's parents said something hopeful, and I knew it was reflected in my own.

The only thing that made it at all bearable was the absolute certainty that I would see her again. She was with the Ellimist now, doing whatever he had her doing. But she was still my best friend, and I knew without a doubt that our paths would cross.

"How's ummm... David?" Melissa asked while flicking the sand from a shell she'd picked up. She worked at a dirty spot with her finger, then held it up to her ear to hear the ocean. Which was rather silly since she was standing right next to the ocean, but that was Melissa.

Jake visibly bristled a little, but he answered her. "The Chee have him in their underground park. They reprogrammed him so he can't leave that area. They say he's furious." A tight, small smile came to his face. "Good."

My watch beeped, and I looked down. "I've gotta go, guys."

Melissa dropped the shell she was holding and brushed her hands off. "It's time?"

I nodded "Three O'clock." Smiling weakly, I started walking away. "I'll see you guys later." I left the others there while Tobias flew over me. He followed me to the bus station, then winged away once the bus started off. He'd meet me there.

Twenty minutes later, the bus deposited me where I needed to go. I checked my watch again and then crossed the sidewalk and cut across the grass. I was already late. Jogging around the corner, I looked around. Please tell me I hadn't missed them. I couldn't miss this. Out of everything that had happened, this was something I absolutely had to be here for.

Overhead, Tobias came in to land on the roof. (Other doors, at that end. They're coming out.)

I flashed him a grateful smile and then ran that way. I made it to the doors just as they exited. My mother and father were, not quite together, but at least not arguing. Between them, Sara scribbled something in a notebook that she'd taken for her diary and couldn't ever be seperated from.

And ahead of them, Jordan, yes, Jordan, walked with the help of a pair of crutches.

I have no idea how it happened. I don't know if the Ellimist stepped in, or if some even higher power was responsible. Jordan was legally dead for seven minutes, declared just as I arrived. But she woke up. The doctors can't explain it. No one can. But she's alive, and somehow, I don't think that needs explanation. She was being released from the hospital today.

As I came to a stop and hugged her tightly, making her complain about nearly making her fall, I thought about Cassie. I lost her, but like Jordan, she survived. Maybe she wasn't here right now, but she was still out there, and she would always be my friend. I'd help her, no matter what. And she would help us. The Ellemist had gained an ally, but Cassie was, and always will be, an Animorph.

And now, whenever Marco or someone asks why we're fighting this war when we are so pathetically outnumbered, why we fight no matter how many times we lose and how hopeless it seems, I have an answer. I look to Jordan, my sister, who was dead for seven minutes and condemned to her fate by what should have been the only power that could have saved her. But she was here, alive.

So, when anyone asks why we fight a hopeless battle. I tell them there's no such thing.

Miracles do happen.

END

Next: The Pretender

My name is Tobias...


End file.
